FRAGMENTS 
 
 h 
 
 NORMAN BRIDGE 
 
GIFT OF 
 
 \c* 
 
Fragments 
 
Fragments 
 
 AND ADDRESSES 
 
 BY 
 
 NORMAN BRIDGE, M. D., A. M. 
 
 Author of "The Penalties of Taste," 
 
 "The Rewards of Taste" and 
 
 "House Health" 
 
 BIRELEY & ELSON 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 MCMXV 
 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1915. BY 
 BIRELBY & ELSON PRINTING CO. 
 
 Published April, 1915 
 
 , 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 BIRBLEY & ELSON PRINTING Co. 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 EL LIBRO * . . . - 1 
 
 A BUTTERCUP . . : - ... * "... 5 
 
 THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION . v . . 9 
 
 THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF HYPERCRITICISM . . 35 
 
 CONSERVATION FOR THE INDIVIDUAL . . . 57 
 
 AM I MY BROTHER S KEEPER? .... 83 
 THE ULTIMATE GOAL . * . . . .109 
 
 EDWARD WALLER CLAYPOLE . . . 129 
 
 BRONZE BUST OF PROF. CLAYPOLE . . . 151 
 INDUCTION ADDRESS . . . .159 
 
 CHARLES DWIGHT WILLARD . . . . 169 
 
 THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM 179 
 
 VERMONT . . ... . . 197 
 
 THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF . . . . 209 
 
 WOMEN IN BUSINESS . .... 215 
 
 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 229 
 
 THE BEST BATH FOR MANKIND .... 251 
 
 THE DRAUGHT FETISH 263 
 
 PASADENA ARCHITECTURE 271 
 
 THE YOSEMITE IN WINTER 281 
 
 AN AMERICAN PROGRAM 293 
 
 PREVENTION OF RAILROAD ACCIDENTS . . . 301 
 
 THE MASTODON 315 
 
 AN ELDERLY WOMAN . . . . . . 325 
 
 To AN OLD BROOM ... 333 
 
 rs 
 
 13540 
 
El Libro 
 
El Libro 
 
 With lading of knowledge from work-time 
 
 brought 
 
 And temper of wisdom from full life giv 
 ing 
 
 A book s the recorded breath of thought, 
 From a soul that s toiled, to the thought 
 ful living. 
 
Buttercup 
 
Buttercup 
 
 (On receiving a buttercup dug by a friend from beneath the 
 snow on the Rocky Mountains.) 
 
 Far from its home in meadows fair, 
 In sunny vale and grateful air ; 
 In frigid clime, on rugged steep, 
 Beset by frost on mountain sweep, 
 Beneath the snows enshrouding deep, 
 This flow ret grew and bloomed. 
 On height, above the homes of men, 
 So cold the wild beast keeps his den ; 
 Securely hid from human eyes, 
 By snow shut out from clouds and skies, 
 Uncared for save by One all-wise, 
 It grew, till chance exhumed. 
 
 Beside the heart of him w r hose hand 
 A thousand miles across the land 
 This gem has sent, it comes to bear 
 A truth that s deep and broad and fair: 
 Beyond the kind Creator s care, 
 That nothing lives or is; 
 
 7 
 
BUTTERCUP 
 
 As sweet fruits grow neath roughest 
 
 shell, 
 
 So in all things deep lessons dwell. 
 In every spot, or warm or bleak, 
 With petal d lips in sweetness meek 
 Upturned, we ll find, with faith to seek, 
 Some smiling flowers to please. 
 
 8 
 
The Burdens of Conversation 
 
The Burdens of Conversation 
 
 For a race of social, biped animals that we 
 are, being more or less educated, and with 
 our education running largely toward lan 
 guage and its relations to life and living, it 
 would seem impossible that speech could be 
 a burden. Yet such it is to vast numbers of 
 people ; and not least to people of much re 
 finement and some education. Our fine 
 means of vocal interchange of thoughts 
 ought always to be a blessing; yet it has 
 to its debit a great variety of calamities. 
 It leads its burden bearers into false posi 
 tions every day of their lives; it gives their 
 world a wrong impression and estimate of 
 them they pass often for less worthy peo 
 ple than they really are. It leads them 
 often into associations that are less helpful 
 than they deserve and need, and associations 
 it may be that, once entered into, they are 
 unable to escape from. 
 
 It leads often to bodily sickness, for it is 
 sometimes responsible for profound nerv- 
 
 11 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 ous collapse, even suggesting mild insanity. 
 And where it is not the sole cause, it is 
 sure to be a potent influence to help bring 
 it about and to prevent recovery. 
 
 In our tensive civilization we tend to con 
 versation frenzy. To be able to talk, and 
 to talk, have come to be a duty; and it ap 
 pears to be not only a duty to do it, but to 
 do it well, and the effort makes some of us a 
 world of trouble. 
 
 Extreme bashfulness is to the popular 
 mind a great personal misfortune, and it 
 concerns less the way we sit or stand, or 
 what we do with our hands, whether our 
 clothes are proper or are worn correctly, 
 than it does that we are able to say the right 
 word, to converse creditably, and not at the 
 most inopportune times to be dumb. Bash- 
 fulness is always connected with our talk. 
 Nobody feels very deeply this sensation 
 when in a room with people who are forbid 
 den to speak. 
 
 To be dumb or inept when we should 
 speak and speak well is a calamity, and 
 makes an emotional tension like that of a 
 student writing his final examination on 
 which his diploma, and so perhaps his 
 career in life, may depend. It takes a finely 
 poised fellow to be calm, and to undergo such 
 an ordeal without the fatigue that comes of 
 great nervous strain. The strain could 
 
 12 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 hardly be greater if he were a prisoner wait 
 ing for a verdict that might send him to the 
 penitentiary. 
 
 So-called nervous prostration is largely 
 due to three mental causes which are com 
 monly called mental and nervous ones. They 
 are: first, overwork and therefore exhaus 
 tion of the care-taking function of the 
 brain very rarely overwork of the unemo 
 tional thinking machine ; second, worry over 
 what others may be thinking and saying in 
 their minds about us and remembering 
 about us ; and third, a sense of duty to talk 
 to people, to make conversation, to say the 
 right thing, to entertain others by words, 
 and especially to acquit ourselves creditably 
 in conversation with strangers and casual 
 acquaintances. We remember with tragic 
 emotion how some maladroit speech of a 
 neighbor has been carried from mouth to 
 mouth in the neighborhood perhaps for 
 years, to be laughed at and ridiculed ; and 
 the fear of such a calamity befalling our 
 selves becomes often a positive obsession. 
 
 One of the most cardinal symptoms is 
 fatigue at being obliged to entertain others 
 in talk, and the dread of it as a duty. A 
 woman victim of this disorder will go to 
 bed with fatigue after entertaining another 
 woman for twenty minutes. She may reach 
 a point where she will refuse to see any 
 
 13 
 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 caller whom she would feel obliged to enter 
 tain. With half the strain she can go and 
 make a formal call upon another woman, be 
 cause if she feels herself getting nervous 
 she can say "good day" and go; she cannot 
 say "good day and please go" to a caller 
 whom she is receiving, and who makes her 
 nervous. 
 
 A man with nervous prostration, walking 
 on a public sidewalk and seeing, half a block 
 away, a friend approaching whom he must 
 stop and converse with if he meets him, 
 will cross the street and walk on the other 
 side to avoid the meeting. These are symp 
 toms that are well known to every physi 
 cian of experience in such disorders. 
 
 There is a mental cowardice in our con 
 versation that frequently brings us to grief. 
 We are actually afraid to show our igno 
 rance of a subject in conversation, yet we 
 do generally show it unless we are adroit 
 and resourceful in quick wit. Thus we hesi 
 tate to ask questions of an acquaintance 
 and put him at ease (and ourselves too), and 
 we try in our conceit to think of some talk 
 that will enable us to air our own knowl 
 edge, and usually fail in the attempt; or 
 thereby we worry him who might wish to 
 air his knowledge. 
 
 Our diffidence and hesitation are dis 
 tinctly egoistic. We wish to say the great 
 
 14 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 thing, the thing creditable to us, and we 
 cringe under the fear that we shall say the 
 uncreditable thing. Otherwise, it is our 
 interest in the conversation that is upper 
 most in our minds, not that of the person we 
 are talking to. So we hesitate to tell him 
 that he has a splotch of mud on his face or 
 his collar; and we may hesitate to do a 
 needed casual kindness to another because 
 we have not been introduced to him. 
 
 An intellectual man calls at the house of 
 some acquaintances. The mother of the 
 house, unable to go down at once and re 
 ceive him, asks her young lady daughter 
 to go and entertain him for a few minutes. 
 The daughter protests but finally goes with 
 fear and trepidation, and whining the ques 
 tion to herself: "What can I think of to 
 talk to him about? She is not afraid of the 
 man for he is harmless enough, but she is 
 afraid of herself and the duty that is scar 
 ing her the duty to entertain him in con 
 versation. It does not occur to her that he 
 might entertain her had this been in her 
 mind she would have gone down with joy. 
 Nor does she discover that by the simplest 
 device she could make him entertain her. 
 But she is oppressed with the duty to amuse 
 him and nothing else, and so when she 
 reaches the reception room she is in a high 
 state of nervous tension and begins to talk 
 
 15 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 nervously and inanely, and rapidly to cover 
 her embarrassment, and so both are ill at 
 ease until the mother appears. Moreover the 
 girl has a poor opinion of herself, as he has 
 of her, for she could not possibly hide her 
 embarrassment and want of mental poise. 
 
 How easy for her, after a salutation, and 
 apologies for her mother, to have expressed 
 some interest in the intellectual things that 
 she knew interested him, to have told the 
 plain truth that perhaps she was herself 
 densely ignorant of these particular things, 
 and to have asked if he could tell her some 
 thing of them in a way that a very ignorant 
 young woman could understand. She would 
 then have had him launched into a fine con 
 versation that could not possibly embarrass 
 her (since she had put herself at ease by con 
 ceding her ignorance), but that she must 
 enjoy. She would have had another gain, 
 and he would too; she would have had his 
 high opinion of her and both would have 
 been happy; as it was he was ill at ease and 
 she was very unhappy. 
 
 We are not cowardly in conversation with 
 all people. We can talk to people below our 
 assumed intellectual level without any dif 
 ficulty ; the young lady referred to could talk 
 to the gardener and the cook and probably 
 the chauffeur, because here she would have 
 felt herself strong, and because of this she 
 
 16 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 would be free to ask questions for the pur 
 pose of learning and not to make conversa 
 tion. She would not have been on dress pa 
 rade, that is, on her good manners or her 
 best manners, for best manners always in 
 clude talking manners. 
 
 This cowardice is often the directing force 
 that throw s us into a groove of life, into a 
 career, that may be very unfortunate. It 
 leads us to make the less fortunate selec 
 tion of associates, of traveling companions, 
 of partners in business and very often of 
 husbands and wives. To avoid the burdens 
 of conversation we often select intellectually 
 downward instead of upward. Other things 
 being equal it profits us to seek the higher 
 levels always. 
 
 I once knew a marriage engagement to be 
 broken off because the girl found it so hard, 
 or thought she did, to entertain her fiance 
 when he called on her. The match ought to 
 have been a fortunate one, especially for 
 the girl (for the man was her superior), yet 
 the picture projected into the future, of a 
 life-long task, daily and many times a day to 
 be obliged to find some subject of conversa 
 tion whereby she might entertain him, was 
 a horror too awful for her to contemplate, 
 and so she fled from it. The fact was that 
 she did not need to entertain him ; if she had 
 known the beauty and secret of silence and 
 
 17 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 kept still and been calm and tranquil about 
 it, he would have entertained her every day 
 of their lives, and abundantly. She cudgeled 
 her brain for small talk, vivacity and wit, 
 which she thought a duty, while he would 
 have led her into more serious yet pleasant 
 themes and paths, to her everlasting benefit. 
 
 Some friends of mine a childless couple 
 of superior people adopted a beautiful lit 
 tle girl. They educated her well and intro 
 duced her to many well-to-do and superior 
 young men, some of whom fancied her, but 
 she felt in awe of them, she was always shy 
 and retreating when they talked with her. 
 She had no ideas or conversation in their 
 realm of thought. She did not feel in awe 
 of the grocer s clerk, and she married him, 
 to her permanent drudgery and many griefs. 
 
 The ideal of conversation must always be 
 to give and take; each to speak and each to 
 listen, and it must in the main be gentle. 
 It should never be the monopoly of one 
 without the consent of the other. If it is 
 this latter it is an egoistic monologue. But 
 sometimes this one-sided converse is de 
 sired by the quiet party; then it is not a 
 monopoly of the one but the tacit choice of 
 both. 
 
 Some of the most congenial and attached 
 pairs of friends are those where the one does 
 nearly all the talking. Both are perfectly 
 
 18 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 satisfied ; the one talks easily, his thoughts 
 fall into words readily, he thinks aloud 
 well or both think he does, and he likes 
 to talk. The other likes to hear him talk, 
 and will himself keep still a whole evening 
 while the one runs on in an endless stream 
 of words that are interesting to both, and 
 they will separate after hours so spent, both 
 feeling that they have had a good time talk 
 ing with each other. And the talkative one 
 will be loud in his praise and appreciation of 
 the conversational powers of the other who 
 has said hardly two dozen words during the 
 evening, and those in assent or interroga 
 tion, to keep the voluble one talking. The 
 curious fact is that the quiet one may 
 be unaware that the other one has done 
 nearly all the talking; he may think that he 
 himself has done a material part of it, espe 
 cially if the talkative one has praised him 
 for it. It is surprising what a lot of wise 
 things we admit we have said when we 
 are praised for having said them ; and after 
 we have a few times made the admission, 
 we come to believe that we have really said 
 them. 
 
 In an amusing stage performance that I 
 have heard of, a wife is troubled by some 
 thing she has unfairly kept from her hus 
 band, and is telling a woman friend that she 
 is going to confess to him all about it. Just 
 
 19 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 then the husband enters the room and the 
 wife falls on his neck with loud wailing and 
 a flood of tears. He tries to comfort her, 
 tells her to never mind, that she is a darling, 
 and he understands, and she must dry her 
 tears. She goes on with her wailing, but 
 not a word of her secret. Then she grows 
 quiet momentarily, then bursts out again in 
 a roaring wail to be again quieted in the 
 same way. This scene is repeated several 
 times over without a word about any secret 
 or anything else; finally she becomes calm 
 enough for the husband to go back to his 
 business. Then she turns to her woman 
 friend in a dewy outburst of gladness that, 
 as she says, she has "told him all about it." 
 Such things occur in real life. 
 
 There is a considerable proportion of 
 women, in whose social life the making of 
 formal calls on their neighbor women is a 
 duty, who never will call alone on a stranger 
 or on one a little strange or awe-inspiring. 
 They will wait until some friend (or hus 
 band) can go with them to help in the con 
 versation which they shirk. They dread 
 the talk burden, and they must keep within 
 touch of some skirt or coat tail for refuge 
 from it. I have known more than one girl to 
 be invited to a house party or to visit distant 
 acquaintances, who declined because of this 
 
 20 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 very fear, although some other excuse was 
 usually given. 
 
 Bashfulness is a form of conceit. Nobody 
 is very bashful who is not forever thinking 
 of himself. The bashful man is afraid, 
 fearful; and fear is a subjective emotion. 
 No one can thoroughly exteriorize his mind 
 who is beset with fear fear is an egoistic 
 sensation. No one can converse easily, can 
 get away from the thraldom of fear in con 
 versation, until he can put away this beset- 
 ment of constantly and terribly thinking of 
 how he looks, acts and talks. 
 
 The bashful man can converse easily with 
 some of his familiar and possibly convivial 
 friends, because with them he has lost the 
 sense of fear; with them he is not afraid. 
 With strangers and mere acquaintances he 
 is afraid, he is shy and shuns them ; he fears 
 he will not say the right word, or look the 
 right way, or act in the right way. And he 
 usually believes he is saying the wrong 
 thing or behaving badly whether he is or 
 not. His conceit prompts him to try to say 
 some surprising thing that he hopes will 
 impress others; he will rarely think of 
 saying or asking the thing that might help 
 or please the others. If and when he can 
 get down from his egoistic pedestal he will 
 talk about simple things, will be ready to 
 say he doesn t know, and to ask questions 
 
 21 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 that will make conversation easy and de 
 void of terrors. 
 
 Yet the bashful fellow often says he 
 doesn t know, because he fears to get into 
 a controversy by saying that he knows; 
 and he will spend a whole evening in a visit 
 and will confine his own speech to saying 
 yes or no, or making some wholly non-com 
 mittal remark that cannot possibly lead to an 
 argument; for he hates argument at which 
 he might be defeated and humiliated. He 
 would blush deeply if he were worsted in 
 argument. He blushes deeply too if he is 
 joked or made fun of, unless with his 
 familiars with whom he can joke back. 
 
 Boys are more self-conscious than girls, 
 they are more bashful (especially in the 
 presence of the opposite sex before whom 
 they desire to behave well) ; they are more 
 conceited than girls. So, girls as a rule have 
 less difficulty in conversation than boys. 
 Yet girls and women are more likely than 
 boys and men to have the symptom group 
 called nervous prostration, and when they 
 have it any forced conversation sends them 
 into collapse. 
 
 The first sentimental fancy of a boy is 
 likely to be for a girl older than himself. 
 He finds it easier to talk to and to get on 
 with such a girl than with one of his own 
 age or younger; he doesn t know why this 
 
 22 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 is so, but the fact is that she is more likely 
 to help him on in conversation, so he can 
 seem to become really acquainted with her; 
 and on her part she finds it easier to have 
 some real comradery with him than she does 
 with a man of her own age or a little older, 
 for with the boy she feels no instinctive need 
 to avoid an unfit love scene the very thing 
 the boy may incline to make; then, because 
 he is younger she feels the maternal instinct 
 of helpfulness toward him. 
 
 Once an older girl was thus trying to help 
 a young man in conversation. He was dif 
 fident and blushed much and easily. She 
 tried several subjects of small talk to no 
 effect ; he would not talk but would merely 
 grunt or answer in monosyllables. Then she 
 thought of a subject that must certainly 
 loosen his tongue; that subject was his 
 mother. She knew his mother, and she be 
 gan by praising her, told him how wise and 
 sweet and beautiful she was, and how glad 
 she knew he must be to have such a mother. 
 Then she stopped and waited for him to 
 respond. When he perceived she was wait 
 ing for him a hesitating, rather silly smile 
 came over his face and he warmed enough 
 to speak, but not enough for a positive state 
 ment that might challenge discussion. He 
 merely said slowly: "Yes, I rather like her 
 myself." Another girl at some social func- 
 
 23 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 tion tried in vain to help on a young fellow 
 in talk, but she evidently didn t have 
 the instinct of sympathetic helpfulness, the 
 mothering instinct, for she said finally: 
 "Pray, have you no conversation?" 
 
 There are some people who are not bash 
 ful, or at loss for the right word, or eager 
 to say some great thing, who are yet self- 
 conscious, apprehensive and fearful, lest they 
 shall not be quite polite enough in their 
 speech or generous enough to their friends 
 and if they happen to be half sick or very 
 tired the eccentricity is increased. It leads 
 them into many mistakes and excesses ; they 
 are fulsome in their excuses for the things 
 that pertain to themselves their clothes, 
 their houses and their own lack of courtesy 
 (which is really excessive) ; they make little 
 orations of praise to their friends (making 
 them feel sheepish) and even sometimes 
 their enemies and are charged with insin 
 cerity and affectation by their neighbors. 
 They are in trouble for fear they are not 
 exactly proper, the while they are unproper 
 by the misuse of some very good motives. 
 And they add to their perplexities by covet- 
 ousness of praise and love-words from 
 their friends, and grieve if such words fail 
 or are not cordial enough. It is hard to 
 be true to ourselves in unseeking candor, 
 in kind frankness to others, and not worry 
 
 24 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 about what others will say or think. If it 
 were easy we might escape many a nervous 
 breakdown. 
 
 Nothing shows the incubus of conversa 
 tion better than the various tricks that we 
 practice, mostly unwittingly, against this 
 nightmare. A study of these tricks reveals 
 some queer habits. Our forms of salutation, 
 our passing of the time of day, show our 
 instinctive dislike of the frictions of conver 
 sation ; they are calculated to avoid contro 
 versy and argument. We say, "good morn 
 ing" there can be no argument there. Or 
 "it s rainy today/ when both know that it 
 is raining, or "rather dusty today," when 
 the wind is blowing the dust and leaves and 
 scraps of paper all about. We say "how do 
 you do?" no contest is possible there, the 
 other person must reply, and we could hard 
 ly controvert what he says. But he prob 
 ably doesn t tell us how he is, but says 
 "how are you?" 
 
 Why don t you salute your neighbor 
 whom you have called on to ask his help in 
 getting the street paved, with this real busi 
 ness of your visit? You don t do that, but 
 you tell him what he perfectly well knows, 
 that it is a cold day. He agrees that it is. 
 Then you may ask him about his family or 
 compliment him on his own good appear 
 ance ; then you may introduce a dozen dif- 
 
 25 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 ferent subjects about which you feel sure he 
 agrees with you, to get him into good tem 
 per or more surely to keep him so, before 
 you begin the real business of your call 
 and all this to avoid friction, as well as to 
 succeed. 
 
 We gather, each in his own way, a lot of 
 stock subjects for talk, some stories, jokes 
 and perhaps conundrums to help us out in 
 times of trouble. As we meet on the street 
 some of us ask each other for any new 
 stories both for the sake of the stories and 
 to replenish our equipment for conversation. 
 We make these stock facilities do duty on 
 many occasions, and we are often eager to 
 tell them, because it is so easy, and so saves 
 us from embarrassment. 
 
 Some of us are forever quoting from oth 
 ers as though we had no thoughts of our 
 own. This requires a good memory and 
 some reading; but it is a poverty-stricken 
 device at best. 
 
 Some of us, too, in order to cover our 
 timidity often embellish our conversation 
 with mirthless and wholly senseless giggles 
 of laughter, and we usually do it quite un 
 consciously. Or we have a worse habit 
 but the same in purpose of using slang, 
 or bravado or brusqueness or even profan 
 ity and vulgarity. A middle-aged superior 
 woman, who had suffered through life the 
 
 26 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 reputation of being an abrupt, brusque, 
 slangy person, once told me that this was 
 really foreign to her nature, that she hated 
 it more than her friends or enemies possibly 
 could; but that it was a habit whose pur 
 pose was to save her from embarrassment 
 in conversation. 
 
 Next to this in undesirableness is a habit 
 of using the most obvious, bromidic com 
 monplaces. It is a refuge from embarrass 
 ment for those who have the habit; it helps 
 their conversation and it is fortunate for 
 them that they are generally unaware how 
 their talk strikes others. 
 
 Various tricks with our hands are as com 
 mon as daylight. We twirl our watch- 
 chains or our fingers or we play with our 
 buttons the late President McKinley would 
 play with the coat buttons of a man with 
 whom he was in earnest, close conversation 
 till sometimes he tore them from the coat. 
 We stroke our mustaches or our beards, or 
 pull down our vests or fold and fumble a 
 piece of paper; or we make drawings on 
 paper as we talk all to ease our embarrass 
 ment or to help our mental attention. I 
 know a dozen men who in any business dis 
 cussion must always be drawing some geo 
 metric figures on a writing pad or paper. 
 But we never do any of these tricks in si 
 lence, positively only and always while talk- 
 
 27 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 ing or needing to talk, and the fact that we 
 fall into such habits and in such ways is 
 proof positive of the burden, if not the fear, 
 of conversation. 
 
 Can this burden be dropped or shifted? 
 Can we increase our capacity for the best 
 verbal sociability? To find the way would 
 be great good fortune to most of us, for 
 it would regenerate us and make us strong 
 against some kinds of misery. It could be 
 done for some of us, but with difficulty, 
 for it requires a great amount of self-study 
 and self-discipline, and most of us are lazy. 
 If we are ever to accomplish it, it must be 
 by our own efforts, for others can do little 
 for us that they will have the wisdom, tact, 
 and inclination to do. We must learn the 
 secret, make our own rules; then our own 
 courage, wit and continuity must save us, 
 if ever we are saved. 
 
 Next we must learn to stand more se 
 curely on our own moral feet. We must 
 think more about being consciously right 
 and essentially proper, than of what trifling 
 things some others may say or think of us. 
 If we are consciously right we can afford 
 to smile and be satisfied, as we can afford to 
 ignore and forget trifles in what we say or 
 what is said to us. 
 
 Then we must learn the value and beauty 
 of little talk and of silence, and the joy of 
 
 28 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 those friendships that are so intimate and 
 genuine as to make constant conversation 
 unnecessary. Until we have reached that 
 plane we are outside of the glory of the 
 choicest fellowships, and if we know this 
 secret and practice it with our friends, 
 we can easily use it more or less with our 
 acquaintances. 
 
 Next we ought to put away our conceits 
 and be to our friends and others, as simple 
 learners anxious to hear and to learn, and 
 never afraid about our ignorance, and before 
 we can put away our egoism we must know 
 that we have it, and that we have been sin 
 ners in this sort ; then we are ready for 
 real improvement. They are cheap scien 
 tific experts on the witness stand who are 
 afraid to say they don t know. Those of 
 the highest attainments and greatest learn 
 ing find it most easy to acknowledge their 
 limitations, as they are the most humble 
 toward the truth. This kind of humility will 
 help us over our bashfulness, and it will 
 shift or shunt the load of our burden to fresh 
 bearing places on our backs. 
 
 Finally we must study the art of conversa 
 tion as best we can, and so try to make it 
 easy. And it is possible ; more than that, 
 it is easy if we get the grasp of the best 
 formula and, what is the hardest task of all, 
 get and keep control of ourselves. For a 
 
 29 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 terse statement of a good formula I quote 
 here from an obscure book, with some para 
 phrasing: 
 
 "The recovery from this particular talk 
 disease . . . depends much on the abil 
 ity of the victim to evoke conversation by 
 others, while he has pleasure in holding his 
 tongue and keeping his own powers in re 
 serve. And that ability is nothing but the 
 art of making conversation easy. This art 
 is a natural gift to many people, and is the 
 envy of almost every bashful, diffident and 
 self-conscious person. 
 
 "To acquire it, to become adept at it, may 
 well be the ambition of all the victims of 
 this unfortunate malady. 
 
 "Nor is the art difficult or hard to learn. 
 Anybody can have it if he has sufficient for 
 titude and self-control, and will persist in 
 patience. But he must first be born again 
 to a few cardinal truths that are always 
 wholesome. To encourage conversation is 
 to bring out and enlarge the powers of the 
 other person, and these cardinal truths con 
 cern his interest and fate most intimately. 
 When we consider the good of the other 
 person, we, by so much, sink our own selfish 
 ness and conceit and that, besides being 
 good in itself, is the true key to the art of 
 conversation. To think of the other per 
 son and his needs is an act of genuine 
 
 30 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 altruism, and leads us not merely away from 
 our own selfishness but away from our bash- 
 fulness (which is a phase of selfishness), so 
 that our powers of rational talk increase. 
 This kind of an effort is thus a means of 
 grace; and it brings us surprising rewards. 
 It is a missionary movement whose value 
 nobody will ever question. It helps those 
 who receive, and it transfigures those who 
 give. 
 
 "When one sets out in this sort of self- 
 improvement there are a few things he will 
 do, and certain things he will positively not 
 do and wherein he will not air his own 
 things, his people, his gifts, or himself, save 
 in the most tentative way, and to bring out 
 the other person. He will hold in abeyance 
 the subjects he knows most of, or speak of 
 them with apologetic hesitation, and seek 
 the ones the other person is most familiar 
 with. He will ask gentle questions in a 
 spirit of confidential deference so as not to 
 frighten his friend, for questions asked in 
 a conceited or pushing way are sure to 
 scare the other one dumb. If he enters into 
 real controversy the conversation may stop 
 suddenly; but the gentle raillery of sham 
 controversy may help it on. Too intense an 
 interest in the subject of the talk may 
 frighten the other person, as it will make 
 him hesitate to change the topic when he is 
 
 31 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 tempted to do so. Quizzing, joking, or 
 ridiculing another often stops his conversa 
 tion like water on a flame. 
 
 "Our artist in talk will maintain a demure 
 mood of interested, rather ignorant inquiry, 
 not critical or protesting, but sympathetic 
 and indulgent. He will not in this go to 
 the opposite extreme of trying to make the 
 other person do all the talking, or allow him 
 to feel that his talk is taken critically, for 
 that would soon seal his lips. He will 
 change the subject of conversation as 
 needed, so as to prevent mental fatigue, and 
 save the talk from running dry. He will not 
 decorate his part of the conversation with 
 silly giggles. He will learn just how much 
 to keep silent, how much to inquire, how 
 much to tell of what he knows, how much 
 to defer, in order to put the other one com 
 pletely at his ease and let him find his 
 tongue. He will be able to rise to large 
 things and to descend to small and simple 
 ones with equal ease and facility, as the 
 knowledge, ignorance, and temper of the 
 other person seem to require. Thus he will 
 become a skilled performer in an art that is 
 greater than any of the so-called fine arts, 
 because it helps in a larger way the two 
 classes of people who are most in need of 
 its benefits, those who can talk and ought 
 
 32 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 to listen, and those who would listen and 
 ought to talk. 
 
 "While he does these things he is sub 
 merging his own conceits and egoism, for 
 getting his own bashfulness, and coming to 
 be himself at ease. Thereby he makes a 
 distinct growth in versatility for himself; 
 he broadens his own horizon and makes his 
 attainments worthy of his own pride. Bet 
 ter than all else, he acquires a mood of mind 
 and a serenity of spirit that will contribute 
 powerfully to his own permanent comfort 
 and force. At the same time the other per 
 son learns to talk almost without knowing 
 it, and warms with joy at his own expand 
 ing powers. Soon, too, he discovers that 
 even his rude grasp of this new art gives 
 him fresh vantage for higher attainments. 
 He has found the key to other arts beyond." 
 
 The great remedy, then, for the burdens, 
 is at bottom unselfishness, honesty and 
 kindness, with a little courage nothing 
 more and nothing else. It seems natural to 
 add courage as one of the needed qualities, 
 but the moment we can put aside our selfish 
 egoism, it is easier to talk ; when we can 
 put our minds into an attitude of absolute 
 candor and frankness as to the things that 
 we prefer to talk about, we find conversa 
 tion still easier; and when in addition we 
 are filled with a sense of kindliness to 
 
 33 
 
THE BURDENS OF CONVERSATION 
 
 others, conversation is so easy that hardly 
 an effort of courage is needed, for there is 
 no longer any fear; courage is only needed 
 when there is fear. 
 
 34 
 
The Physical Basis of 
 Hypercriticism 
 
The Physical Basis of 
 Hypercriticism 
 
 In every sort of human effort which in 
 volves expertness, or where this may be an 
 advantage, aspiring souls have always tried 
 to excel. 
 
 When the work signifies a high degree of 
 skill, and especially when its products are 
 entertaining and pleasure-giving, we call it 
 an art. So we have, among other arts, 
 music, sculpture, painting, engraving, archi 
 tecture, decorating, book-binding, acting and 
 literature in manifold forms. These arts are 
 both part and proof of a higher civilization. 
 In any community they are one of the meas 
 ures of social perfection. 
 
 The line of demarcation between art on 
 the one hand and work or drudgery on the 
 other is plain, although it does not always 
 seem to be. The man who, for example, 
 does a piece of handcraft, like binding a 
 book or making a door, always in the one 
 fixed way and as any other of a hundred 
 
 37 
 
THE PHYSICAL BASIS 
 
 men would do it, is working at a trade. But 
 the moment he varies his work by some 
 new excellence and by putting his own bet 
 ter taste into it, that moment it becomes an 
 art, for it has the stamp of his per 
 sonality in an effort toward variety or to 
 make it a little superior to anything else of 
 its kind. 
 
 The people who love and apprehend the 
 arts in any degree, fall into a sort of nat 
 ural classification regarding them. First of 
 all, there are those to whom some of the 
 arts are a regular vocation, and by which 
 maybe they earn their living. This is a small 
 company of mostly superior people with 
 sensitive mental and emotional organiza 
 tion, and, except as to a few (mainly of the 
 literary ones), of a critical judgment in a 
 narrow field. Many of them are persons of 
 mental breadth and balance, but the tend 
 ency of their vocation is rather against the 
 best mental poise, as it is against a broad 
 mental equipment and general world wis 
 dom. We do not look for great philoso 
 phers among the professional artists, al 
 though we occasionally find one there. 
 
 Next are those who, loving some of the 
 arts and having pleasure in their study, 
 practice some of them as an avocation or a 
 diversion. They do this more or less for 
 amusement, or from ambition to become 
 
 38 
 
OF HYPERCRITICISM 
 
 real artists ultimately; some of them do it 
 from an unexpressed desire to be admitted 
 to a certain choice set of people. This is a 
 much larger class than the first. It includes 
 all the dabblers, some who are a genuine 
 credit to the work, and a multitude of the 
 hopeless whose efforts are futile if not gro 
 tesque. 
 
 Third comes the class of us who do not 
 practice any of the arts, either as experts or 
 amateurs, but who desire to have a fairly 
 critical knowledge of some one or several of 
 them ; and who are entertained and profited 
 by the contemplation of them. This class 
 numbers vastly more than the other two 
 combined ; it includes nearly all the rest of 
 the people of even moderate education. It 
 also includes certain folks who by our 
 definitions have little or no education. It 
 embraces the vast army of us who would 
 like to have correct notions ; who wish to 
 be enlightened about the arts, and that with 
 out too severe a wrench of whatsoever dis 
 criminating taste we have, which really be 
 longs to us and is not borrowed or put on 
 like our clothes; for we are disturbed in our 
 minds to know what real art is and why 
 there are so many standards among differ 
 ent students of the subject, and so much 
 change in them from decade to decade. 
 
 39 
 
THE PHYSICAL BASIS 
 
 Certain ideals of superiority come with 
 our striving for excellence, but not wholly 
 on account of it. They come somewhat 
 from changes in fashion; we grow out of 
 them ; anyway, we leave them, then come 
 back to them perhaps in after years, as we 
 have done in architecture and furniture. 
 The criterions are more or less personal, 
 and are often based on individual predilec 
 tion ; one person perhaps likes green tints, 
 another red, another purple. Certain liter 
 ary phrases are pleasing to some people and 
 offensive to others. I have a friend who 
 never could approve of a piece of literature 
 if it contained the expression "it appeals to 
 me." And I knew a good man who had some 
 literary taste, who never used, and hated 
 to see in print the words "husband" and 
 "wife." The standards of a man at suc 
 cessive periods of his life or of his artistic 
 growth differ. He grows as his experience 
 enlarges; whether he grows upwards or 
 sideways or in a gyrating fashion, depends 
 on numerous circumstances. But he changes 
 more or less through the years, unavoid 
 ably; and he is sure to think he grows. 
 
 As we try to enlarge our knowledge of an 
 art we naturally turn for counsel to those 
 who, we fancy from their reputation (or be 
 cause they say or admit it), know more 
 about it than ourselves. And if we do not 
 
 40 
 
OF HYPERCRITICISM 
 
 practice as a vocation or an avocation any 
 of the arts, we still like to feel that we have 
 the best taste regarding them. Few of us do 
 practice any of these arts, even so far as 
 to dabble in them ; but some knowledge of 
 them and some discrimination about them 
 are a part of any broad education, and es 
 sential to general refinement. Moreover this 
 sort of knowledge is fashionable, and a few 
 of us of this third class are as jealous of 
 our judgments on art as the artists them 
 selves. 
 
 Whether or not we are arrogant in our 
 own opinions, we like to turn to some of 
 the real or so-called experts or critics for 
 confirmation as to what is correct. We 
 often do this surreptitiously, and then some 
 times announce their opinions as our own. 
 These critics are persons who have studied, 
 observed or written about the arts, or who 
 have done all three of them, but they are 
 rarely professional artists themselves. We 
 naturally think that they know more about 
 the arts than the rest of us, and they do. 
 They generally point the way to higher 
 things ; they often encourage the struggling 
 ones capable of doing good work, and they 
 properly humiliate the charlatans. They be 
 come to us a very interesting company from 
 the fact that most of us like to lean upon 
 some other mind than our own, especially 
 
 41 
 
THE PHYSICAL BASIS 
 
 in all matters wherein ignorance might be 
 embarrassing; we have an instinctive timid 
 ity against standing alone and without 
 "authority" ; we like "authority" as we like 
 to quote. Quotations are the refuge of the 
 weak and timid ; and most of us are timid. 
 Since Emerson s great address on the 
 American Scholar, three-quarters of a cen 
 tury ago, we here in America have made 
 some remarkable progress toward our own 
 standards, especially in literature. He en 
 couraged a generation of artists to stand 
 alone, on their own feet, and without lean 
 ing; but new generations have come, and 
 we have poor memories and conventional 
 cowardice. 
 
 As in politics and religion so in all arts, 
 the doctors and the guides differ somewhat, 
 and we may never hope to see them all 
 agree. It is the despair of candid students 
 of almost every subject of human thought, 
 to discover that the experts differ in their 
 notions of what is correct, differ at times 
 sharply, and frequently dispute hotly about 
 their differences. Personal jealousies often 
 count as well as unemotional opinions, but 
 forceful people will differ and have always 
 differed, even in spite of a strong desire to 
 agree with each other. And intense people 
 grow prejudices as garden spots grow 
 weeds, while jealousy and envy are the 
 
 42 
 

 OF HYPERCRITICISM 
 
 selfish blots on the struggles we make for 
 prestige, even when we think we are only 
 seeking perfection. 
 
 An American lady in Paris, while in con 
 versation with a musical composer, asked 
 his opinion of another composer. He curt 
 ly condemned the other to low mediocrity, 
 and said his compositions were amateurish 
 and altogether crude not to be considered 
 as true art in any sense. In a few days she 
 chanced to meet the other composer, and 
 asked his opinion of the first. She was sur 
 prised to have him praise the other man 
 generously saying that his works were of 
 the highest artistic quality. Then the lady 
 burst into laughter, and, in some embar 
 rassment, felt obliged to explain the cause 
 of her mirth. She told frankly the story of 
 the other conversation, and how the other 
 man had disparaged this one, whereupon 
 the latter looked serious and said: "Did he 
 really say that about me? Well, madame, 
 you know we are both consummate liars." 
 
 The various standards in art usually 
 clash in some things, yet in cardinal princi 
 ples they are somewhat alike. There is a 
 certain fitness of things ordained by na 
 ture; certain colors put together harmon 
 ize and are pleasing to the eyes of most 
 gentle people, other colors are inharmonious 
 and clash. Certain sounds make harmony 
 
 43 
 
THE PHYSICAL BASIS 
 
 by a law as fixed as the stars. So there is to 
 some degree a natural standard in things 
 beautiful, which in every art and work is 
 promptly pleasing to the untaught sense of 
 a large number of people. For example, in 
 music, the Largo from Handel s "Xerxes" 
 will never grow old or cease to be pleasing 
 nor will Chopin s Funeral March, nor the 
 Traeumerei of Schumann. So a mass of 
 yellow chrysanthemums on a green, a pur 
 ple or a black background, tends to soften 
 the wrinkles and broaden the face of the 
 crudest person that looks upon them. 
 Some people seem never to discover many 
 of these nature laws ; others are slow to see 
 them. It is their variations and the myriad 
 combinations possible without too much 
 violence to them, that give scope for so 
 many of our human standards about which 
 we are prone to differ. 
 
 Once in Vienna I met two superior 
 American girls who were studying music 
 with the best Austrian teachers, and they 
 were hard workers. They had been to 
 gether for many months in Berlin, under 
 the best German teachers, and they had 
 become proficient, and both played beauti 
 fully. But they were not satisfied; they 
 wished for perfection, and so went to 
 Vienna to be finally polished off. And 
 each one of them had already been con- 
 
 44 
 
OF HYPERCRITICISM 
 
 vinced by her new teacher that all she had 
 learned of German method was wrong, and 
 each one was industriously trying to un 
 learn and undo all her acquired habits; to 
 destroy, if such a thing were possible, most 
 of her cerebral and manual automatisms in 
 playing, and to acquire new ones. The 
 great company of unspoiled music-lovers 
 were unable to tell, from the music, one 
 method from the other ; and the artist ad 
 vocates of each school had about equal 
 technical arguments for their faith. But 
 the two students were permanently harmed 
 in their artistic growth. 
 
 As the critics differ from each other in 
 opinion, in personality and in ways of say 
 ing things, we have an opportunity of se 
 lecting our guides from among them. 
 Whom shall we listen to, and try to fol 
 low? The critics with their followers con 
 stitute several distinct camps. To which 
 camp shall we belong? For we may fol 
 low as we like or rather as we choose. The 
 vital question is, how shall we make choice; 
 whether more from our desire to be in 
 fashion, or from our worship of some artist 
 or critic, or from our common sense and 
 calm judgment as to what is sane, whole 
 some, and innately fitting. So we need to 
 study ourselves, as well as the critics. 
 
 The critic is often one-sided, his sense of 
 
 45 
 
THE PHYSICAL BASIS 
 
 proportion is bad, he hates certain colors, 
 certain mannerisms of artists, like the voice 
 tremor in singing or the use of certain 
 terms and expressions in language. In 
 other words, he is hypercritical which in 
 most cases means unhealthily and un- 
 wholesomely critical. It might almost be said 
 that the only critic that is ever altogether 
 wholesome is one who refrains from hat 
 ing. He may admire certain artistic forms, 
 even love them, and he will be helpful. He 
 may as faithfully shun other forms because 
 to him they are crude, and he may pity 
 those who are devoted to such forms, and 
 he is still useful and admirable ; but the 
 moment he begins to hate things in art he 
 becomes an unsafe guide. 
 
 What is the cause of all this diversity, 
 of this hypercriticism, of this hating of 
 some things, barely tolerating others, and 
 reserving admiration for only the few? For 
 this is the attitude of many critical people 
 who listen to music or plays, who read 
 books or study pictures. Note the remarks 
 of a group of such, on coming from a con 
 cert, and see how many of them disparage 
 the singer for his perhaps trifling errors or 
 his inferiority to some other person who 
 has sung the same songs ; they will dispute 
 as to whether he did or did not flat one of 
 his high notes; few of them have sincerely 
 
 46 
 
OF HYPERCRITICISM 
 
 enjoyed the music. They are happily or 
 unhappily miles removed from the crowd 
 of normal people at the concert who, to 
 their credit, drank in the music with joy 
 and benefit. 
 
 All the minor and struggling musical 
 artists are constantly in fear of this un 
 friendly critical feeling. If you ask one of 
 them to play for you, he may not believe 
 even though you protest it, that you wish 
 it for the pleasure of hearing the music. 
 He will feel, whether he says so or not, 
 that you are merely anxious to know how 
 well he plays, and that you will listen with 
 an ear of unfriendly or envious criticism, 
 ready in your heart to gloat over his imper 
 fections while you may speak your hollow 
 compliments. So he will offer all sorts of 
 excuses to avoid playing as that he is not 
 in practice, has not touched the piano for 
 so long; or he has forgotten his music, or 
 he is not feeling in exactly the mood for 
 playing. 
 
 The fact is that people who are natural 
 objectors, who are normally hypercritical 
 and protestants, often become our critics. 
 It is the natural tendency of an objector 
 to become a critic. He easily makes talk, 
 and spicy reading if he writes; newspapers 
 and publishers like him because he puts so- 
 called ginger into his work. 
 
 47 
 
THE PHYSICAL BASIS 
 
 He makes, too, an interesting teacher, 
 and so schools and colleges may engage 
 him; it is easier and often more acceptable 
 to attack and disparage than to construct, 
 unless you promise some good thing for 
 nothing. He likes to instruct and domi 
 nate, and always has something to say, 
 even if it is gloomy and pessimistic. 
 
 One cause of morbid hypercriticism, 
 which has received little or no attention, is 
 mental or emotional fatigue. I mean the 
 fatigue of a certain sort of mental atten 
 tion, especially what may be called emotion 
 al attention the fatigue that comes of an 
 effort to find enjoyment. The artist dwells so 
 long upon one subject or one phase of it 
 that he grows tired in the effort, and longs 
 for something new, something different. 
 This he always finds and for a time enjoys 
 because, for one reason, he is thereby 
 rested; it gives him a relief from his old 
 drudgery, and he is glad. The new thing 
 he takes up with is frequently a wide de 
 parture from his previous ideals, and may 
 be acceptable to but few artists or other 
 people. Yet he may stick to his new love 
 and dislike the old one through the rest of 
 his life. He may even say sharp things of 
 others who refuse to follow him. I sus 
 pect that this was the intellectual history 
 of the late Mr. Whistler. Many refined 
 
 48 
 
OF HYPERCRITICISM 
 
 people say he was great, and doubtless he 
 was; but the vast mass of casual art-seek 
 ing people would pass his pictures by with 
 scant notice if they did not know the 
 name of the painter. 
 
 The critical side of the mind is one of 
 its emotional sides. It is the overwork of 
 the emotional, the critical, the caretaking 
 faculty of the mind, which more than any 
 other influence (possibly more than all 
 others) induces that form of cerebral de 
 preciation which is absurdly named ner 
 vous prostration. It is a very common dis 
 order in America and mostly befalls the 
 critical, precise, particular, emotional peo 
 ple, who are short of mental and nervous 
 stamina, or who hate, fear, envy and yearn 
 too much, or who lack an enduring and 
 saving sense of humor. 
 
 If the morbid critic rarely has true ner 
 vous prostration, it is because either his 
 nervous stamina is proof against it or, 
 while he is lacking in fear, his enjoyment 
 in the castigation of others is a sufficient 
 preventive. 
 
 The ideals of the artist and the critic at 
 different times in their lives may be widely 
 different, because they grow and develop 
 and to develop is the fortune of every art 
 ist, student, critic or plain man who even 
 contemplates for long the results of human 
 
 49 
 
THE PHYSICAL BASIS 
 
 effort of any sort ; it is the reward for every 
 one who is not spiritually made of wood. 
 But we are sometimes perplexed about the 
 changing standards of the same people, as 
 well as their differing ones. Each one is 
 sure to think he has developed forward, 
 and may even come to believe that his old 
 standards are to be despised, and that only 
 the new ones are worthy. Sometimes the 
 new ones are dilettante, exquisite, and 
 over-refined. Yet the rule is that those 
 who are not avowed artists, or engaged in 
 the drudgery of criticism, progress whole 
 somely from good to better, if not to the 
 best. This is true of many of the artists 
 and the working critics themselves, some 
 of whom have been known to confess 
 frankly that they have a constant struggle 
 to avoid the warping tendency to adverse 
 criticism. For it is a fact of human nature 
 that those who are set, or who set them 
 selves, to the task of monitor for the ar 
 tistic work of others, tend toward a habit 
 of protest and objection. It requires a 
 knowledge of this fact and watchful atten 
 tion in order to avoid it. The human im 
 pulse to blame is greater than that to 
 praise; to the shame of our selfishness and 
 jealousy it seems easier to discourage and 
 pull down than to encourage and build up. 
 The professional critic is the most unfor- 
 
 50 
 
OF HYPERCRITICISM 
 
 tunate of all, the man whose business it is 
 to review books, to criticize art, music and 
 acting; and who cares to be thorough and 
 fair. He is capable of being among the 
 most useful, as he may become in a way 
 among the most dangerous of men. He is 
 under constant temptation and hard condi 
 tions, and his remedy is plain. He needs 
 to know his danger of critical brain tire and 
 of mental tangents, as he needs to desire 
 that his critical work shall be sane, judicial 
 and wholesome. He ought to mix some 
 other occupation with that of criticism, to 
 be one of the people, to mingle often with 
 those of simpler tastes and not ignore or 
 hate their ideals honestly held ; to study 
 them as well as his art, and not constantly 
 flock with others of his own ilk, where he is 
 likely to compare his peculiar irritations 
 with theirs, like a lot of infirmary patients 
 growing more morbid by comparing with 
 each other their respective symptoms. His 
 critical function like any other much-worked 
 function requires a certain amount of rest, 
 and he must struggle against the constant 
 tendency to fall into the groove of protest, 
 to complain and depreciate regularly, and 
 to find things to commend only rarely. If 
 he is healthy, vigorous and honest, and 
 spends a part of his day in wholesome other 
 occupations, especially if he can be much 
 
 51 
 
THE PHYSICAL BASIS 
 
 out of doors, he may retain his sanity of 
 view and improve his judgment; but he is 
 both liable and likely to allow his fatigue, 
 his indigestion, his irritations and his hates 
 (or possibly his jealousies) to influence him 
 powerfully. And he is always in danger of 
 losing his sense of real values, and of be 
 coming what he would never willingly be, 
 an unsafe and unbalanced critic. 
 
 In selecting our guides, we should seek 
 for the sane, wholesome, tranquil people; 
 not the nervous, irritable and irascible ones. 
 Finally, they should never really be allowed 
 to direct us, they should only assist us to 
 reach the best standard that we are capa 
 ble of remembering always that our capa 
 bilities differ like the trees. Our duty is to 
 take the hints and informing statements of 
 the critics, as we take the useful teachings 
 of other people, and to form our own opin 
 ions and refuse to like or say we admire 
 the things that we do not. The critic is 
 bound to shoot over the heads of some of 
 us, to hit the feet of others, to irritate some, 
 and to please and help others. This is be 
 cause he measures out to all people alike, 
 regardless of their capacity or experience, 
 his personal standard of wrongly labeled 
 absolute art. There is no such standard 
 save as to a very few general truths, and 
 the sensible thing for us down in the pit 
 
 52 
 
OF HYPERCRITICISM 
 
 to do, is to make our own final verdicts. 
 Within limits there are as many standards 
 of art as there are thoughtful, humble lov 
 ers of beauty. 
 
 For ourselves the remedy is to keep on 
 studying the arts that are our vocations, our 
 fads, or our merely interesting contempla 
 tion. The more we study, the more we see 
 and hear and compare, the more will our 
 own tastes mature and clarify. Our danger 
 is that we will blindly follow some perhaps 
 self-constituted critic who has as crude a 
 taste as our own. Hence it is important 
 that we judge our critics and cultivate a 
 mental independence of our own. We must 
 stand on our own judgment and not be led 
 blindly. But we ought in all fairness to our 
 selves as well as to the critics, to regard the 
 views of a serious student of any subject 
 as evidence, if not proof, that there is some 
 reason back of them, and we should find 
 that reason if we can. We may even try to 
 admire the things others like and we dis 
 like. Otherwise we should testify to our 
 own individual conceits and confess our 
 selves to be unteachable and incapable of 
 growth it is possible that we are wrong, 
 and if so it is important that we of all peo 
 ple should know it. 
 
 Above all things we ought to be honest 
 with ourselves ; it never pays to fool our- 
 
 53 
 
THE PHYSICAL BASIS 
 
 selves. If we are specially courageous we 
 will now and then be frank to confess such 
 ignorance of art as we have, and not be 
 ashamed of it then we will find to our sur 
 prise that many others are as blind as our 
 selves, others will follow our confessions by 
 their own. There will be revealed to us a 
 large community of ignorance, and out of 
 it will come a knowledge that we do know 
 certain things if we are ignorant of others 
 and we may come to have a trifle of pride in 
 both. Anyway it will furnish us a basis to 
 build upon. To know and confess our ig 
 norance is the beginning of wisdom. 
 
 But alas, to our discredit, many of us will 
 say "how beautiful," just because somebody 
 else has said it, when we are mentally strug 
 gling to find some beauty in the thing, and 
 mostly failing to discover it. There are 
 some good people in the hither part of Cali 
 fornia who say they see beauty in the down- 
 hanging, dusty leaves of our very tall palm 
 trees. If they are right they should logi 
 cally contend for bedraggled skirts, unkempt 
 hair and dirty faces. The only real beauty 
 of such palm-leaves is that of a dead tree 
 or a cadaver. But we have heard admirable 
 people say that these somber things are 
 artistic, and so we say it. 
 
 The recent little craze in this country for 
 Japanese prints illustrates the point. A few 
 
 54 
 
OF HYPERCRITICISM 
 
 of these pictures are naturally beautiful, or 
 if you please, beautiful to the average 
 American mind but most of them are only 
 such for the reason that the mind of the ob 
 server is tired of other forms of art and is 
 glad of something new ; or that he has ac 
 quired the peculiar taste of the Japanese 
 themselves, has actually reached their view 
 point (which I believe is almost an impos 
 sibility) ; or finally that he has risen to some 
 heights of refinement that are foreign to his 
 neighbors. Really, most of us admire them 
 because we believe the statements of some 
 exquisite people who say they admire them 
 and that they are beautiful. 
 
 Hypercriticism, erratic, intense criticism, 
 then, is largely due to two distinct influ 
 ences or traits. The one is inborn to the 
 critic whether he be an artist or not, and 
 consists in a mental bent toward egoistic 
 intensity, exaltation of his own notions, 
 and a militant disposition to defend them. 
 This leads to extreme views, to intolerance 
 of opposition and to many antagonisms. 
 This cast of mind is unjudicial, it is lia 
 ble to z/7zrational notions and wworderly 
 opinions. 
 
 The other influence is fatigue of the criti 
 cal sense, weariness with the old pictures 
 and methods ; brain-tire from the old plays 
 and games, and a yearning for new visions, 
 
 55 
 
THE PHYSICAL BASIS 
 
 for something novel and fresh, and unlike 
 the old. And a curious fact about this men 
 tal condition is that the victim of it, like 
 victims of other forms of mental disorder, 
 is unaware of its existence, and would 
 stoutly deny it if anybody should have the 
 hardihood to suggest it to him. 
 
 56 
 
Conservation for the Individual 
 
 
Conservation for the Individual* 
 
 Never before in the history of America 
 was so much thought given to conservation 
 as now. It is a tardy arrival, forced upon 
 us by economic pressure, growing competi 
 tion and our own waste. 
 
 The discussion has been largely of mass 
 economics and the scientific management of 
 large interests. It has had for its purpose 
 the noble one of saving money and conserv 
 ing the interests of the workers. 
 
 Many thorough studies have been made 
 and plentiful reports of how to conserve the 
 forests, water powers and mines of the na 
 tion ; how to reclaim the deserts ; how 
 greater economies can enter into the busi 
 ness of agriculture and the operating of rail 
 roads, mines, all sorts of manufacturing, and 
 the government itself; how to provide 
 greater safety and more wholesome condi 
 tions for operatives. 
 
 Nobody could be in greater need than we 
 
 *A Club Paper 1911. 
 
 59 
 
CONSERVATION FOR 
 
 of such efforts, for we are probably the most 
 wasteful people on earth, both in substance 
 and effort, if not the most careless. We 
 waste enough constantly to support, by 
 proper economy and carefulness, nearly or 
 quite another equal number of people. 
 
 We are being taught how to save and 
 avoid reckless waste, and are already sav 
 ing some millions annually by better man 
 agement and conservation. This adds by 
 so much to the common wealth, and ulti 
 mately reaches to some degree, and prob 
 ably unequally, all the people ; although the 
 majority of them may not believe it. The 
 citrus farmers of California know of their 
 larger profits in late years, and railroad 
 stockholders confess to either better divi 
 dends or reduced freight rates, while many 
 manufacturers have seen their profits grow 
 with better conditions for their operatives. 
 Our present saving is a trifle compared to 
 what we shall save by comprehensive con 
 servation. 
 
 Important as this sort of reform is, and 
 great as are its promises for the future, the 
 amount saved is a thing of small moment 
 compared with the value of the movement 
 on the economic thought-habits of the peo 
 ple. Through and out of it is sure to come 
 a better attitude toward personal economics, 
 and the avoidance of waste by the individual 
 
 60 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 himself. Surpassing the value of conserva 
 tion for the common benefit and contribu 
 ting to it is the conservation of the average 
 man ; and the average man is a toiler in 
 some sort, and earns a daily average of less 
 than two dollars, while he wastes his pow 
 ers and opportunities in a hundred ways. 
 This man is the most important thing in 
 the community; he is the bulwark of the 
 state and society; collectively he furnishes 
 the sterling men and women who come up 
 to take the places, in the larger affairs of 
 life, of the vanishing families that are weak 
 ened by alleged over-prosperity, by too much 
 and foolishly spent money, by vanity and 
 other forms of dissipation. It is impossible 
 to overvalue the personal conservation of 
 this man. And it is not merely the labor 
 ing man who needs arousing; for nearly 
 every clerk, merchant, manufacturer and 
 professional man needs it quite as much. 
 
 Every man who works at anything ought 
 to become an introspective student of his 
 ow r n powers, duties, achievements and pleas 
 ures. He should make it a cardinal part of 
 his program of life to cut out the things that 
 are unpurposeful, and make every moment 
 and act count for the conservation of this 
 quaternity of purposes; not for powers 
 alone, nor for duties, achievements or pleas 
 ures, but for that due combination of them 
 
 61 
 
CONSERVATION FOR 
 
 that alone can most nearly represent a per 
 fect man. It is a matter of self-discipline and 
 development; the man can have little help 
 from others; he must walk alone under his 
 own conscience and fixed purposes, and be 
 glad but not vain of every step of progress. 
 
 Is it possible for us to re-educate ourselves, 
 to change our ways and conserve our forces 
 the better to bring comfort and success? I 
 believe it is just possible for adult people 
 but extremely difficult. It is much easier 
 for a child to be started right and then with 
 some good intention to stay right and grow 
 better. Our habits are fixed firmly, and we 
 are uncontented ; we keep trying to do bet 
 ter, and with poor success, because of our 
 illogical methods and bad reasoning. We 
 are caught easily by some new remedy, some 
 airy promise of more ease and longer life ; 
 we try it and fail usually. We look for some 
 short cut to happiness, some new process 
 that shall play the part of a fairy. But there 
 are no short cuts and few mysteries, beyond 
 the mystery of life. 
 
 How shall a man begin and progress in 
 his own conservation? It is impossible to 
 get the best results in a haphazard way ; or 
 by considering one side only of his activi 
 ties ; and of course, no progress is possible 
 to a man who thinks his program is perfect 
 and perfectly performed. A new life comes 
 
 62 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 only to those who know they are in need and 
 are willing to work steadily for betterment. 
 Most of us are sinners in waste and the scat 
 tering of effort, and need reformation. 
 
 More scientific management will sooner 
 or later enter most lines of industry. It is 
 in the air, and it ought to succeed for it 
 saves power and money ; it cuts the corners 
 and shows how a man may most easily and 
 profitably use his strength. It is a pathetic 
 fact that many of the men and women them 
 selves who do the work rebel against the 
 changes that conserve and even save their 
 lives, and must be forced by indirection and 
 finesse to adopt them. 
 
 Some men will wish to improve their work 
 and methods. For such there is hope, since 
 they have only their fixed habits and old 
 ways to overcome. Some have no deep de 
 sire to improve, although a few of these may 
 think they have. For them there is small 
 prospect, because the ambition to change is 
 a vital need. 
 
 I. 
 
 The most natural first thought of personal 
 conservation is of the man s own body (and 
 man is here used collectively for the race). 
 His body is his engine of power as well as 
 his source of enjoyment ; poor health and re- 
 
 63 
 
CONSERVATION FOR 
 
 duced power handicap unavoidably any 
 man, albeit a weakness in one faculty may 
 attend a compensating increase in another, 
 and sometimes the physically weak outlast 
 the physically strong. 
 
 What is the basis of bodily conservation? 
 
 The first consideration is to avoid sickness 
 and keep well. The micro-organisms of dis 
 ease which kill most people of all ages attack 
 first and most destructively those who are 
 below their physiologic par. A normal de 
 gree of bodily resisting power is usually able 
 to destroy the microbes or fight them off for 
 years and years. Experiments in agriculture 
 have shown, what we might have known all 
 along, that vigorous plants resist parasites 
 better than weak ones. In some sections of 
 this country a few years ago the people 
 seemed to be facing destruction of their chief 
 crop by a ruthless parasite; but deep plow 
 ing and abundant cultivation so increased 
 the vigor of the plants as to fight off the 
 parasites and restore the prosperity of the 
 country. 
 
 The thing to do for the human individual 
 is to try to conserve his health, keep it up 
 to the normal standard, and when he falls 
 sick have him rest, receive the best hygienic 
 conditions fresh air, food, abundant sleep, 
 and a serene state of mind. We are sinners 
 all in frittering away our energy, and worry- 
 
 64 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 ing our nerves over avoidable trifles and 
 unavoidable things that for the moment 
 seem great, but are essentially trifles. Prob 
 ably half of all our worries are wholly unnec 
 essary, and not a few of them are grounded 
 in our own conceits and unprofitable selfish 
 ness. Tranquillity, rest, sweet temper and 
 good hygiene are equal to the recovery from 
 probably over ninety-five per cent of all the 
 cases of sickness. It is for a small propor 
 tion of all the cases, trifling as well as grave, 
 that the early attention of the physician 
 actually saves life, while for a much larger 
 number he may assuage suffering, give a 
 sense of security, and so hasten the recovery. 
 
 In more detail the basis includes the fol 
 lowing : 
 
 (a) To live on foods, not stimulants ; and 
 such foods as the average of intelligent peo 
 ple have found acceptable and wholesome. 
 That means a mixed diet ; some sort of com 
 posite of the best rations of modern armies, 
 the best hospitals and sanitariums not gov 
 erned by fads, and of the tables of the ath 
 letic teams of the colleges. But many people 
 eat too much, and most eat too rapidly. A 
 fair guide as to quantity is to eat as little as 
 convenient without reducing the body 
 weight. Eating slowly and chewing well 
 make a smaller meal more power-giving and 
 more satisfying. 
 
 65 
 
CONSERVATION FOR 
 
 In the main, the human body, including 
 the brain, does most work, stands most sick 
 ness and lives longest without stimulants 
 of any kind. Some laboratory workers have 
 proven this especially as to brain work. Sta 
 tistics show that habitual tobacco users 
 seized with pulmonary tuberculosis are less 
 than one-half as likely to recover as are 
 non-users. 
 
 (b) Habitations are important. The sim 
 plest and cheap ones are usually the best. 
 Those with many cracks and crannies for 
 ventilation are best of all. Every dweller 
 should have the amount of constant out 
 door air necessary to approach the out-door 
 life ; and sleeping out of doors is commend 
 able. Everyone should always be in a 
 zephyr of moving air, sometimes called a 
 draught it gives him his due of fresh air 
 with every breath. The remedy for air too 
 cold is more fuel or more clothes or both 
 and this is economical in doctors bills and 
 more strength and life. 
 
 (c) The rule as to clothes is comfort 
 the least clothes consistent with comfort 
 will do ; but the clothes should neither bind 
 the body anywhere, nor be buttoned or 
 hooked up in the back. To be guilty of the 
 latter absurdity is a grievous sin against 
 personal conservation. 
 
 Don t worry over the small amount of 
 
 66 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 clothes the children wish to wear they will 
 not sicken from it, or even take cold; colds 
 are due to hygienic sins within, never from 
 without. Remember that two layers of 
 underwear are three times as warming as 
 one. 
 
 (d) Recreation should be a daily, not 
 weekly, duty for all workers, and it should 
 supplement the work and help the body and 
 mind to keep balanced and strong. It is 
 absurd for a mathematician to play chess in 
 the evening for recreation ; a man who sits 
 at his work all day should not sit at a card 
 game all the evening, but take a long walk 
 or ride instead ; a mail carrier need not take 
 the long walk, he might take his recreation 
 sitting. An indoor worker ought to have 
 his recreation out of doors. 
 
 (e) A daily three-minute bath is a good 
 thing a very hot one is the best but the 
 bath is incomparably less important than 
 the fresh air and well chosen recreation. 
 
 (f) The man who neglects his own or his 
 children s teeth, and wittingly allows them 
 to become ruined, is guilty of an unforgiv 
 able sin, for it increases the burden and 
 shortens the life. Effective chewing is a 
 necessary function of life. 
 
 (g) To avoid sickness, and to escape the 
 consequences of it when it comes, is the 
 essence of conservation. The pathologists 
 
 67 
 
CONSERVATION FOR 
 
 have yet many things to learn, but they 
 have touched bottom a few times, and one 
 of their undeniables is that from birth to 
 death we are in a constant struggle against 
 the micro-organisms of disease, and that we 
 usually in the end are destroyed by them. 
 Even those whose gospel it is never to kill 
 anything, are in this fight as truly as are the 
 rest of us, and kill as valiantly as they 
 can. Knowledge of how to avoid danger 
 is within the reach of any man ; and 
 what best to do when sickness conies is 
 learned from people who have rationally 
 studied most about it, and no poor man need 
 impoverish himself to have assistance. He 
 does not need to consult an aged woman or 
 the policeman on the corner to learn how to 
 diagnose or treat diphtheria, and the fact 
 that God is good has no influence on the 
 germs of tuberculosis. 
 
 The Mexican peons are afraid of the night 
 air lest they take pneumonia ; when they are 
 outdoors in the night or the cold they breathe 
 through a fold of their blanket held over the 
 mouth, and when they are indoors they hud 
 dle together and so encourage the distribu 
 tion of their microbes from one to another. 
 Many intelligent and some educated Ameri 
 cans do things quite as foolish. 
 
 (h) Cheerfulness and optimism, and a 
 sense of humor in sickness, are valuable un- 
 
 68 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 speakably. They help digestion and recov 
 ery, beside being an asset in themselves; 
 they help us to ignore a lot of trifling ail 
 ments that often terrify the timid to the 
 point of panic. Careers are ruined, battles 
 are lost and good people get sleepless and 
 gray from trifling annoyances, often wholly 
 imaginary. I have known a man to fret him 
 self into a frenzy because he was ordered to 
 swallow, for a month, a sugar-coated pill 
 once a day, when the pill contained only 
 bread or some other inert substance. And 
 thousands of people worry themselves into 
 invalidism or into a drug habit because they 
 do not sleep well ; their fretting keeps them 
 awake. The truth is that they sleep enough ; 
 no great amount of sleep is necessary, but 
 eight hours horizontal rest of body each day 
 is needed. In our society today there is 
 hardly a greater waste of energy and pros 
 pects than in useless grief over an insomnia 
 whose horror is almost entirely mental. It 
 has blighted the lives of countless good peo 
 ple. Not more than one insomniac in a thou 
 sand will fail of all the sleep he really needs, 
 if he will go to bed under the best condi 
 tions. These are darkness, horizontal pos 
 ture, a soft bed with a pillow that fits, out 
 door air, warm feet, a cool head, freedom 
 from all stimulants, i. e., alcohol, tea, coffee 
 and tobacco; a light supper and an empty 
 
 69 
 
CONSERVATION FOR 
 
 lower bowel and most vital of all, a con 
 tentment that neither roosters, cars, thun 
 der, nor the snoring or coughing of neigh 
 bors can disturb. 
 
 II. 
 
 Conservation of the man in his work by 
 himself is possible to a great extent. Take 
 a thousand men doing all sorts of work ; at 
 least a third, possibly half of them, if they 
 would study their jobs, would find they 
 could improve their methods so as to do the 
 same amount of work easier and better. 
 Most men work like a mechanic who has 
 learned his trade and is content to use the 
 same methods and tools that his predeces 
 sors have always used. But the workman 
 of today has as good a right to improve his 
 tools and his methods as his great grand 
 father had; even a hod-carrier might find a 
 better way to adjust his load. For over a 
 century men have tried unsuccessfully to 
 induce typesetters to consent to an economi 
 cal rearrangement of the cases for their 
 types, and they refuse to reform. We are 
 dull in observation of what goes on around 
 us, even about our fellow workers, as we 
 are foolish in failing to learn about the kinds 
 of work that are related to our own. It is 
 the bank clerk who strives to know about 
 
 70 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 every job in the bank that is promoted. A 
 friend of mine said to one of his boss farm 
 ers : "I see that our neighbor s new alfalfa 
 field looks more thrifty than ours. Do you 
 know why?" "No, I don t," was the reply. 
 "Is his soil apparently different from ours?" 
 "I don t know." "Did he prepare his soil 
 in any way different from our method?" "I 
 don t know," was the reply. And my friend 
 swallowed his disgust, but looked for an 
 other boss farmer. In our work we make 
 many false motions and useless ones, and 
 do a lot of petty things that consume time 
 and power. We often do things in wrong 
 sequence and so make work and the greatest 
 possible number of steps, instead of the few 
 est. We are apt to make the steps hard in 
 stead of easy ; a man who in walking brings 
 down his feet hard with his knee joints in 
 extreme extension, i. e., quite straight, tires 
 quicker than he who strikes the ground 
 softly and with knees a trifle flexed. We 
 waste power by starting to work late so 
 that we must hurry ; slow trains make their 
 runs with less fuel and wear of the machin 
 ery than fast trains. 
 
 We save strength by liking our work, by 
 continuity of purpose in it and by trying to 
 better it, not by hating it. W T hy does a boy 
 find work so hard and play even laborious 
 play so easy? He likes the one and hates 
 
 71 
 
CONSERVATION FOR 
 
 the other. With interest in a task the hours 
 fly, quitting-time comes soon. Then we 
 often lose by wasteful fretting about the 
 conditions under which we work. We dis 
 like a fellow workman or our employer ; we 
 are irritated by the way he speaks to us ; we 
 are jealous of one whose pay is a trifle more 
 than ours, and so we lose half the pleasure 
 of life that we are entitled to. It profits us 
 to ignore trifles and pay attention to the es 
 sentials. We wastefully fritter away half our 
 strength over avoidable trifles that could be 
 ignored if we would only try. A wholesome 
 sense of humor gives us amusement over 
 many of our petty annoyances, and so saves 
 our digestion and conserves our strength 
 and our sleep. 
 
 Probably a third of the people have fallen 
 or been thrust by accident into kinds of 
 work less fitted to their capacities than some 
 other kinds. If the misfits could take for 
 their fads those kinds of effort that might 
 lead them into more congenial and adapted 
 occupations, it would mean the highest 
 order of conservation. Modern scientific 
 management and study help us to find the 
 jobs we are best fitted for. 
 
 It is only in very recent years that 
 thoughtful men have set about the scientific 
 study of adjusting large numbers of men 
 and women to their tasks, and finding the 
 
 72 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 right or the better tasks for some of them. 
 These students have invaded our factories 
 and shops, and studied the character of the 
 work done by various operatives and the 
 personal qualities of these people, and have 
 found that by some rearrangement great 
 gains can be made in the work and in the 
 comfort of the workers. They have insti 
 tuted a high order of personal conservation 
 for many of these operatives. They have 
 found a girl working at a job unfitted for 
 her and they have given her a different one. 
 She is nervous and is irritated by people, 
 whom she must meet in numbers, and 
 she irritates them; she is given a task in 
 a quiet spot where she will meet few, and 
 another girl tranquil, self-poised and genial 
 is given the task of meeting people, and 
 so a blessing is brought to both. A man is 
 found working at a task requiring some ac 
 curate records in figures and he hates mathe 
 matics and makes numerous blunders, while 
 another man in the same shop is keen at fig 
 ures and is found doing a task that requires 
 nothing of the sort. These two men ex 
 change jobs to the personal conservation 
 of both and so on in a hundred other ways 
 and instances. More reforms of this kind 
 ought to be made, and especially the oper 
 atives themselves ought to study this sub 
 ject and learn to make their own adjust- 
 
 73 
 
CONSERVATION FOR 
 
 ments. A few will find higher as well as 
 better-adapted tasks. 
 
 Some are hewers of wood that ought to 
 be drawers of water. Good blacksmiths 
 would be poets, but rarely are ; and some 
 excellent bookkeepers believe they can run 
 a hotel, a newspaper or a bank. Ambitions 
 for better vocations are always laudable, but 
 the best ambition for every man is to do 
 well the possible, and carefully to test his 
 wings for higher flights before he attempts 
 to soar very far ; but he ought to soar if he 
 can, and if he cannot he owes it to himself 
 to be happy and efficient in his particular 
 vocation on the jogging earth. 
 
 III. 
 
 The third element of conservation is spir 
 itual. Have ideals, but not impossible ones ; 
 be cheerful, don t hate things and people; 
 remember the sun is shining beyond the 
 clouds or the earth, and that we shall see it 
 again. We can do many things, but not 
 create perpetual motion or lift ourselves by 
 our boot-straps. 
 
 We have foolish ideals that cost money. 
 We waste nervous energy in envy of our 
 neighbors who spend more money than we 
 can afford to ; we run in debt for clothes and 
 luxuries, and when we find our pace is too 
 
 74 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 rapid we break our hearts or steal rather 
 than let our friends and enemies see us re 
 trench. This sort of foolish ambition and 
 vanity is one of the greatest obstacles to 
 personal conservation ; it makes the prospect 
 for some of us hopeless. The ambition to 
 strut and show off, to be able in a mean way 
 to look down upon others, is an egoistic 
 frost that in too many of us blights the best 
 chance of worthy success. And vanity is so 
 easily hurt, while simplicity is so helpful 
 and so easily found if only we have eyes to 
 see. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Every man should have some interest out 
 side his daily work, some avocation, some fad 
 even, with his regular vocation. This may 
 be church, lodge, labor union, politics, or 
 some art or study. It relieves the tedium 
 of his work and makes him stronger for it. 
 But woe to the man who lets his fad retard 
 his work, for then it fails of its purpose 
 unless his fad becomes a new occupation. 
 One of his avocations should always be to 
 achieve more knowledge of his business and 
 of everything related to it. Another duty is 
 to study and further some good cause in the 
 interest of such people as himself or for 
 all the people. Our working people are 
 
 75 
 
CONSERVATION FOR 
 
 probably less efficient in their common ef 
 forts than are those of certain European 
 countries, notably England. There men are 
 more likely to unite on one measure of 
 amelioration that is attainable, while we are 
 apt to follow the rainbow of some Utopian 
 ideal that promises to cure all the ills of our 
 social and economic life, and fails. 
 
 Some of our labor union people expend a 
 vast amount of energy and money in seek 
 ing legislation that will stop the courts from 
 preventing violence on the part of the union 
 men against non-union men during strikes. 
 But that runs against the notions of fairness 
 and good order held by a great part of the 
 community, as it seems to run against the 
 Constitution. 
 
 The laudable unions insist that the less 
 efficient man shall receive as high a wage 
 as the more efficient one. That is a fine ex 
 ample of altruism, especially when the bet 
 ter man agrees to it ; but the public finds 
 difficulty in quite approving. On the other 
 hand, every effort to limit by law the hours 
 of work, especially for women and children, 
 and to improve the physical and health con 
 ditions under which work by numbers of 
 people is carried on, virtually so that the 
 weaker ones may not break down, meets 
 with the hearty approval of a great ma 
 jority of all the people. 
 
 76 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 V. 
 
 A great problem of conservation is how 
 really to save the money we have for sav 
 ings. The investments of the average man 
 are often unsuccessful. Why? The first 
 reason is the gambling spirit that resides in 
 most of us, the love of risk in hope of great 
 and unearned gains. Every business man 
 knows that on the average bonds are a safer 
 investment and less speculative than stocks ; 
 yet most poor men and nearly all poor 
 women will invest in stocks rather than 
 bonds, especially if they have a hint of pros 
 pective dividends. And they usually get 
 more than a hint from the stock sellers. We 
 are addled by the stories of the easy and 
 mostly fanciful gains of others, and the real 
 gains of the successful always look larger 
 than they are. 
 
 Another reason is the reluctance of per 
 sons of small means to seek and take the 
 advice of those who have made fortunes. 
 If we are to build a house or a garment we 
 readily seek the counsel of those who have 
 created such things, but when we would 
 build a fortune we usually take the inter 
 ested counsel of those who have themselves 
 failed, but who have roseate schemes of easy 
 money-making. Our post office department 
 recently closed a number of fraud invest- 
 
 77 
 
CONSERVATION FOR 
 
 ment concerns, and estimates that these had 
 already robbed the people of $80,000,000. 
 Over $30,000,000 is paid annually in this 
 country for advertising fake financial 
 schemes. The inference is irresistible. 
 
 There are many kinds of advice by wise 
 people for small investors. One is to buy 
 a home and stop paying rent. This is good 
 advice for the home-loving instinct and for 
 people who would otherwise squander their 
 money. Many a man needs a mortgage on 
 his house to lead him to be economical. But 
 a rented house usually costs less than an 
 owned one, and a workman who must 
 change his residence to a distant city usu 
 ally loses money on his home when he tries 
 to sell it. The man who puts his small 
 money into a savings bank of the stronger 
 kind, or into a safety box and keeps the fact a 
 secret from his neighbors, usually can move 
 to a distant city and carry with him what 
 fortune soever he has. But money in the 
 bank or the safety box is sometimes a great 
 temptation toward picture-hats and auto 
 mobiles, and other beautiful things in the 
 world that money will buy. 
 
 Finally, the largest step of all in personal 
 conservation is to educate the children in 
 manifold expert things, with and without 
 tools ; in the things also that make for their 
 
 78 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 own health and power, and in the economies 
 of life. 
 
 For thirty years or more there has been 
 going on in this country a change in our 
 educational methods in many schools and 
 colleges. The change has been toward more 
 practical work, which means practical use 
 fulness; it has largely taken the form of 
 manual training and practical arts. They 
 began in a few schools and have spread to 
 many, so that today in most of the larger 
 cities there are manual training high schools 
 and some sloyd in the primary and grammar 
 grades. More laboratory methods are in 
 vogue in all the higher institutions of learn 
 ing, including the high schools. These 
 methods are not only more interesting than 
 any other, but they start the student more 
 directly into the work of life, even into 
 actual vocations, and enable him to test his 
 own powers and find his own best life trail. 
 
 The tendency of all this change is toward 
 education in efficiency, otherwise in per 
 sonal conservation. The man who as child 
 and youth had this kind of a practical train 
 ing has been more efficient in business and 
 more useful in the community than his fel 
 low who, with an equal start, was otherwise 
 educated. The contention was freely made 
 at the beginning that these new methods 
 were a degradation in education, that they 
 
 79 
 
CONSERVATION FOR 
 
 could not and cannot discipline the mind 
 like the ancient languages and mathematics. 
 More than twenty years ago there was intro 
 duced into the curriculum of a seminary 
 for young ladies in Massachusetts a course 
 in domestic science, even cooking and the 
 making of clothes, and a storm of protest 
 was made by school men in seminaries and 
 colleges the country over, against what they 
 declared to be a lowering of educational 
 ideals, if not the lowering of womanhood. 
 These objections have not been demon 
 strated to be true, and they are wholly 
 untrue, but if they were true it would be a 
 sorry comment on education to have a lot 
 of men and women more disciplined in mind 
 by the classics, and less efficient in life. 
 
 Education should increase power to do 
 things, to move the wheels of the world s 
 progress. An education that fails in this 
 particular fails indeed. And this grasp-giv 
 ing education need not and should not lead 
 us either to neglect or despise the wisdom 
 of the ages as to the purposes of life and 
 the principles of ethics that are everlasting. 
 Many of the things that Epictetus and Plato 
 and Aristotle and Emerson have taught so 
 fit the needs of the human race, that they 
 will be wisdom always. 
 
 Much has been done for economic educa 
 tion much remains to be done. If men and 
 
 80 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 women think on these things of and for 
 themselves, they will think of them for their 
 children, and see that their children have 
 the best. 
 
 Lastly and aphorismically we may say : 
 
 1. Healthy men reach any goal ahead of 
 the sickly ones. So health is an asset. 
 
 2. Men strong in body and mind reach 
 the goal ahead of the weak ones. So power 
 is an asset. 
 
 3. Continuity of purpose and industry 
 land us ahead of vacillation and laziness. 
 The logic of values seems clear. 
 
 4. The man broadly educated for the 
 thing he is to do (whether educated in or 
 out of school) usually outstrips his unedu 
 cated fellow. So it is worth while to ob 
 serve and learn. 
 
 5. The boy or man whose fingers are 
 stained yellow from cigarettes usually falls 
 behind in the race, other things being equal. 
 The same is true of other poisons of the 
 brain, like alcohol, hasheesh, opium, and 
 even tea and coffee. The trainers of ath 
 letic teams and boxers have found out a few 
 things to a certainty, and the laboratory 
 students are not fools, and they are right in 
 their recent studies on alcohol, showing its 
 reducing effect on the work of brain and 
 body. 
 
 6. The boys and men who indulge oc- 
 
 81 
 
CONSERVATION FOR 
 
 casionally or often in excessive orgies or 
 exhausting pleasures are more likely than 
 others to fall out of the ranks early. The 
 true philosophy of life is the greatest total 
 ity of joy in all the years ; not intensive joys 
 followed by recoils in the shape of the morn 
 ing head and trembling limbs. 
 
 7. The man who studies his job and im 
 proves his tools, who saves his energy in 
 doing it, does it more quickly than his 
 thoughtless neighbor, and often has a better 
 job coming. 
 
 8. The man who is honest with his work 
 and himself gets on easier than the other 
 man, for at least he taxes his memory less. 
 
 9. Cheerfulness, optimism, kindliness 
 without deceiving ourselves help in the 
 race for success, for health and for the larg 
 est sum total of happiness. Let him who 
 doubts try them ! 
 
 82 
 
Am I Really My Brother s 
 Keeper? 
 
Am I Really My Brother s 
 Keeper?* 
 
 A New Doctrine in Social Ethics 
 
 Not long ago a woman, not too old to take 
 an active interest in the affairs of the day, 
 told of a journey she made when she was 
 young. It was from New York to St. Louis, 
 and she took the most rapid means then in 
 existence by which a young woman might 
 properly travel. She went to Albany by 
 steamboat, then to Buffalo by canalboat 
 drawn by horses, then to the Ohio River by 
 stage, thence to Cairo by steamboat, and 
 finally to St. Louis by another steamboat. 
 Many days were occupied in the journey. 
 
 The changes from that day to this, in the 
 methods of travel, are no greater than the 
 changes in nearly every other phase of our 
 social and industrial life. With all the 
 changes, our community life has become 
 
 *A discourse delivered in the Westminster Presbyterian 
 Church, Minneapolis, Minn., Sunday, June 15, 1913. 
 
 85 
 
AM I REALLY 
 
 closer, and our individual lives more depend 
 ent upon each other and more artificial. New 
 social problems confront us every year, and 
 many of the old ones go unsolved. For their 
 solution we have many theories, which we 
 have to change from time to time, as they 
 are disproven or fail of success. 
 
 The fact that we are more closely bound 
 to each other socially, has made it necessary 
 that we should change gradually our laws 
 and customs, for our better protection and 
 for the economic benefits of society. The 
 demand is just as great that we shall con 
 tinually remodel our measures for mutual 
 protection from the standpoint of our physi 
 cal, moral and spiritual health, and our last 
 ing power for work and enjoyment. 
 
 Our progress is irregular, rarely steady; 
 and in our mutations we cling to a few doc 
 trines that seem to anchor us to the bed 
 rock of the philosophy of human life. Some 
 of these principles help, others hinder and 
 must be abandoned, so occasionally a cher 
 ished child of our reasoning brain one that 
 we had thought to be immaculate must be 
 set adrift and abandoned. And it costs tears 
 to do it. 
 
 We love phrases and aphorisms. That 
 "All men are created equal" rings in our ears 
 as though it must be true; but all men are 
 not equal, nor can they be, save in title to 
 
 86 
 
MY BROTHER S KEEPER? 
 
 human rights, and they are not so created. 
 We are unequal in size, in form, in powers, 
 in tastes and in capacity to work, to appre 
 hend and to enjoy. Most of us are handi 
 capped in some way by comparison with the 
 average or the ideal man, and those of us 
 who by birth or accident are weak, deformed 
 or unlovely, struggle to do and be what we 
 cannot, and we fret and rebel because we 
 cannot. The cure for this form of grief is 
 to do what we can do best, and do our very 
 best at it, and not attempt the impossible. 
 Weak men or strong men, tall men or short, 
 there is a job for every kind of a man. 
 The honor is in doing the job well, what 
 ever it may be. 
 
 It is a cardinal truth that one ought not to 
 waste his powers or ruin his opportunities. 
 No man has a right to mortgage his future 
 for present joy. This gospel is as old as the 
 history of the race. The story of Faust is 
 only one of a thousand efforts to teach this 
 truth. It is wrong, too, for any man to ob 
 struct or interfere with the weal or rights of 
 another. Every child has the inherent natural 
 right to his largest possible development, 
 physical, mental and spiritual. He has a 
 right to his race in life, and the best and fair 
 est that he can run, and his neighbors and 
 society ought to help him always, and never 
 hinder. 
 
 87 
 
AM I REALLY 
 
 But accidents happen along the way, and 
 they hinder, and they often destroy. Be 
 cause of the increased complexity of our liv 
 ing, the sum total of accidents still reaches 
 a very high figure. With all our precautions 
 and care, our manifold safety devices and 
 the sane Fourth of July, our mortality, espe 
 cially among children, is frightful; multi 
 tudes die and other multitudes are blighted, 
 dwarfed and crippled, and compelled to lives 
 of suffering and woe a lifetime of grief for 
 a casual firecracker, a death from a mouth 
 ful of carbolic acid. 
 
 Unquestionably the greatest danger to life 
 and happiness is from the micro-organisms 
 of disease that beset us on every hand. We 
 fight and struggle against them unceasingly. 
 We all live militant lives; the religion of 
 complete non-resistance is impossible. There 
 are no non-combatants among us; and the 
 microbes destroy most of us finally. 
 
 A hundred different diseases threaten us, 
 some mild, others mortal. Some come to us 
 from we know not whence, some we know 
 pass from person to person that is, they are 
 contagious ; their microbic causes enter our 
 bodies, perhaps to kill or cripple us, then 
 pass into the bodies of others, and through 
 them to still others, successively, in a chain 
 that is endless. 
 
 One of the greatest problems of this day 
 
MY BROTHER S KEEPER? 
 
 is that of preventable deaths, which the sci 
 ences of bacteriology and hygiene are trying 
 to solve. How can we circumvent the micro 
 organisms that would destroy us? That is 
 the great question crying for answer. 
 
 We daily distribute mortal diseases in 
 ignorance mostly, and we constantly con 
 tribute to accidents so-called. We do this in 
 heedlessness, and we are blunderers every 
 day, where we need carefulness, thought, 
 attention and caution. After the havoc is 
 done, we say, "I didn t know the gun was 
 loaded," or "I didn t know that the fuse was 
 ready to go off," or "I didn t see how a mild 
 hazing of the boy could possibly kill him," 
 or "I didn t suppose my expectoration could 
 give to another diphtheria or consumption, 
 or that my kiss could produce a sore lip that 
 would infect the victim s whole body and 
 blight his life and maybe that of his chil 
 dren." Or again, we say, "God is good, dis 
 ease is a myth ; the thing could not happen." 
 But it does happen, and the microbes of 
 diphtheria and consumption and syphilis are 
 no respecters of persons, or of our theology ; 
 and they have no mercy on our delusions. 
 
 Our public and personal duty today is em 
 phasized by the history of a few diseases 
 that are prevalent among us, that destroy 
 large numbers of people, that are communi 
 cable from person to person, and that are 
 
 89 
 
AM I REALLY 
 
 preventable. Let me refer to a few of them 
 in some detail, and first to two that are mat 
 ters of common knowledge, namely tuber 
 culosis and typhoid fever. 
 
 Tuberculosis is due to the tubercle bacil 
 lus. Many of the lower animals have it, 
 notably cattle, through whose milk we may 
 acquire the disease. In the human lung, it is 
 consumption. It kills probably twelve per 
 cent, of us all, and it cripples or handicaps 
 perhaps twenty per cent, more; and much 
 over fifty per cent, of all people have it some 
 time in their lives, somewhere in their bod 
 ies. It is largely preventable by clean food, 
 avoiding milk from tuberculous cows, by 
 pure air to breathe which means mostly 
 outdoor air and most by destruction of the 
 sputum from all the patients. And the de 
 struction of all the sputum from all the pa 
 tients is a great problem. It requires a hun 
 dredfold more care than has been given it; 
 practically the thing has never been done, 
 perhaps never can be done. Knowing the 
 danger to others from carelessness about 
 sputum, both the patients and their friends 
 have a great responsibility, which is little 
 appreciated. The sanatoriums for the care 
 and cure of the disease are now so many and 
 so useful, that they make us feel that the 
 Christ is walking the earth again. They are 
 mostly the product of the last quarter of a 
 
 90 
 
MY BROTHER S KEEPER? 
 
 century ; and Dr. Trudeau was the leader in 
 this country. 
 
 Typhoid fever is due to a specific bacillus. 
 Its deaths are fewer than from tuberculosis, 
 and it is to a large extent preventable. It is 
 usually acquired through drinking-water, 
 milk and food, contaminated with the mi 
 crobes, which are also often carried by the 
 feet of flies. Do not eat or drink the mi 
 crobes ; have clean food, water and milk ; kill 
 the flies ; prevent their multiplication. Re 
 member that flies multiply chiefly in the 
 offal from stables, especially horse stables, 
 and that the prompt shoveling of such offal 
 into fly-tight receptacles would probably re 
 duce the number of flies ninety per cent. In 
 the presence of an epidemic of this disease, 
 or when we fear to go on long journeys lest 
 we might contract it, we may invoke that 
 wizard of bacteriology, the typhoid vaccine, 
 which will effectively protect us from this 
 danger for at least a year or two. Recent 
 army experiences have proven this state 
 ment beyond a question. They have saved 
 many thousands of lives, and abolished one 
 of the age-long scourges of armies. The 
 vaccine is a fluid containing dead and well- 
 pickled typhoid bacilli ; and it is quite harm 
 less. It bids fair to come into common use. 
 
 Now, let me refer to two diseases that are 
 never discussed freely among all the people. 
 
 91 
 
AM I REALLY 
 
 About them there has been a conspiracy of 
 silence ; they have been spoken of under the 
 breath, as we speak of ghosts and skeletons 
 in unexpected closets, and as though, some 
 how, that half of mankind that is most inter 
 ested the female half ought not to know 
 anything about them. This sinful silence, 
 grounded in masculine egoism and selfish 
 ness, has made them actually the ghosts #nd 
 closet skeletons of all the ages, and largely 
 because of that deadly foible called prudery. 
 Prudery is a social habit by which we try to 
 identify ignorance as innocence, and by 
 which we show our low estimate of the com 
 mon sense of the persons we talk to ; but the 
 cheat is transparent, and usually reveals our 
 own lack of common sense. We seem never 
 to tire of doing and saying things to others 
 to show that we are as shallow as we be 
 lieve them to be. The purest-minded people 
 in the world are those who have a reverent 
 respect for all knowledge that concerns their 
 own weal, and who lift their faces una 
 shamed at having that knowledge, and hav 
 ing others know that they have it. 
 
 One of the diseases in this prude s cata 
 logue is syphilis. Its microbic cause is 
 known. The disease infests and infects the 
 whole human system. It rarely kills quickly. 
 It often does worse ; it causes aneurisms and 
 other degenerations of the blood vessels, 
 
 92 
 
MY BROTHER S KEEPER? 
 
 apoplexies, blindness, destructive tumors in 
 the vital organs, locomotor ataxia, and mis 
 carriages. It is transmitted to children whom 
 it blights or kills. It does other havoc not 
 necessary to be listed here. 
 
 The disease germs enter through mucous 
 membranes, and through wounds and abra 
 sions of the skin. It may be spread by pub 
 lic drinking-cups, and by kissing the lips ; 
 but in the vast majority of cases it is ac 
 quired by impure sexual relations. 
 
 How to prevent the disease is obvious. 
 Avoid the infection where it exists ; that 
 seems easy, but it has taxed the philosophers 
 for centuries with small success. 
 
 Equally destructive with the disease just 
 named, its twin menace to life and happi 
 ness, is another that is communicated sim 
 ilarly and is known as the Neisserian infec 
 tion or gonorrhea, due to the gonococcus, 
 the minutest dot of a microbe as it is seen 
 under the microscope. This microbe enters 
 the blood, and travels to all the organs, in 
 many of which it produces local disease. It 
 enters mostly through the mucous mem 
 branes, many of which it cripples or de 
 stroys. In the eyes of new-born infants it 
 produces a spiteful inflammation called 
 gonorrheal ophthalmia that often causes 
 permanent blindness. Hence, we have blind 
 asylums at public expense, and we have 
 
 93 
 
AM I REALLY 
 
 laws in many states which make it a mis 
 demeanor, if not a felony, for any person to 
 know of a new-born infant with sore eyes 
 and without a physician, if he does not not 
 ify the public authorities or call a physician 
 himself. These laws are beneficent; they 
 tend to prevent blindness, and save the ba 
 bies to possible useful lives, and so keep 
 them out of the asylums. Between 6000 and 
 7000 blind persons are now living in the va 
 rious asylums in the United States, whose 
 blindness was caused in this way. The best 
 estimates are that 10 to 25 per cent, of all 
 the blind in all countries are victims of this 
 one infective cause. 
 
 Stiffening of joints may result from this 
 disease. They become disabled, and nearly 
 every joint of the body may become in 
 volved, the disease usually lasting through a 
 life of helplessness. The so-called ossified 
 man of the museum is a familiar example. 
 
 It produces abscesses and other changes 
 in the pelvic organs of women, leading to 
 probably one-half of all the surgical opera 
 tions performed upon women ; and it induces 
 barrenness and life-long invalidism to many 
 of its victims. 
 
 These two infections probably cause more 
 conjugal diseases and more infelicity, more 
 wrecking of lives and blighting of promised 
 careers than any other thing, save possibly 
 
 94 
 
MY BROTHER S KEEPER? 
 
 the use of alcoholic liquors: and drinking 
 very often leads to the contraction of these 
 diseases. President Jordan has told me that 
 college students addicted to drinking, even 
 to a moderate degree, nearly always acquire 
 one or both of these infections. So he made 
 a struggle, which once led to a near riot, in 
 order to banish alcoholics from the campus, 
 and to send home students found drinking 
 off the campus. 
 
 A thing that tends to purity and safety is 
 physical labor for the young man, whether 
 student or not. One of the best forms for 
 students is, of course, athletics, school and 
 college athletics. Many students work their 
 way through school and college ; and this is 
 even better than athletics, because it fosters 
 democracy and a better understanding of 
 life s values. Work develops muscle and the 
 best qualities of the brain, drives nonsense 
 out of the youthful mind, and teaches it to 
 shun pitfalls, and to know and avoid many 
 of the calamities of life. It has exactly the 
 opposite effect on moral conduct and 
 thought to that of alcoholic stimulants. So, 
 let every young man pray not for an easy 
 time and freedom from work, but for all 
 kinds of severe burdens and for strength to 
 bear them. The favorite notion and aim of 
 men grown rich after early poverty and toil, 
 is that their sons shall not have to work as 
 
 95 
 
AM I REALLY 
 
 they had to in their youth. They could hardly 
 invent a program more sure to ruin their 
 sons than this. And it has ruined them in 
 this country by the thousand ruined them 
 physically, mentally and spiritually, and al 
 lowed poorer boys, with fewer so-called ad 
 vantages, to outstrip them in all the telling 
 ventures of life. 
 
 It is pitiful that virility and power in the 
 world s business should make it needful for 
 a little more caution, fear, and self-restraint 
 than the average youth has, in order to keep 
 him from such a calamity as to acquire 
 either of these blighting diseases. From time 
 immemorial, those who love their kind have 
 struggled to teach men to shun this danger, 
 and have not succeeded very greatly. 
 
 What can be done that will make the suc 
 cess greater? One thing that I am sure 
 would help mightily is more knowledge on 
 the part of the people, young and old 
 wholesome knowledge without prudery. Ig 
 norance is the great obstacle; every young 
 person ought to know the facts; and boys 
 and girls are eager for all the facts of their 
 own physiology. To know is to be armed 
 and protected. They must be taught regu 
 larly and wisely. They can never have such 
 teaching in coeducational classes. There, 
 every text book on anatomy and physiology 
 is shorn of any reference to the vital facts of 
 
 96 
 
MY BROTHER S KEEPER? 
 
 life wherein men and women differ from 
 each other the text books are absolutely 
 neuter. And all oral teaching shuns this 
 knowledge as though it were a pestilence. 
 
 Do you think it is fair to the boys and 
 girls to hide from them all intimate knowl 
 edge of a most potent part of their natures, 
 while we \vorry because they use slang, put 
 their elbows on the table at dinner, and for 
 get to turn down the bedclothes after get 
 ting out of bed in the morning? You seri 
 ously ask the family doctor to have a heart 
 to heart talk with your son, and frighten him 
 from smoking cigarettes, which you think 
 are likely to be his ruination. But the doc 
 tor knows of worse influences that are pull 
 ing him down to destruction and to which 
 you are blind. You love your son, and you 
 would snatch him away from every preci 
 pice that you think of; but you forget the 
 one hidden in the mists, down which he is 
 most likely to fall. The doctor knows about 
 that only too well. 
 
 You wish your daughter to be innocent, 
 so you keep her ignorant, and you picture a 
 time when some good and gentle man will 
 make love to her, always in a romantic man 
 ner. But she inwardly rebels at her restric 
 tions, and is looking for a young fellow with 
 strong muscles, capable of hitting hard, and 
 of using stronger language than she dares to 
 
 97 
 
AM I REALLY 
 
 use. She would be a fit companion for such 
 a stalwart if you would let her. 
 
 The rising generation have us indicted for 
 unfairly treating them ; for defrauding them. 
 The best remedy of repentance in sight for 
 us is to teach them, inform them, educate 
 them. I would have lectures given regular 
 ly to both boys and girls of proper age, by 
 wise and sympathetic physicians of their 
 own sex of course. And in almost every 
 community such physicians are to be found 
 both men and women who would gladly 
 give their services for this purpose. But this 
 being one of the most vital parts of the 
 proper education of the young, there is no 
 reason why the public should not pay for it, 
 as it pays for reading and writing. 
 
 This sort of uplifting instruction has now 
 been done in enough communities to prove 
 its great value to the young people. Their 
 satisfaction in the knowledge gained has 
 been great ; and, best of all, their saner view 
 of life, their higher ideals and wider sympa 
 thies, their more wholesome friendships and 
 greater helpfulness to each other, have 
 shown that this is a missionary effort that is 
 as effective and useful as any on earth. It 
 is a home missionary work in a double sense 
 it is done here at home, and it makes for 
 better homes here. 
 
 The perils of the marriage altar, from 
 
 98 
 
MY BROTHER S KEEPER? 
 
 communicable diseases, have of late been 
 much in the public mind. Almost every wo 
 man comes to her marriage pure and free of 
 such disorders. Women are better than 
 men ; for many men go to the altar infected 
 or uncured of their previous infections. Of 
 course most of these would refuse to marry 
 if they believed themselves to be dangerous. 
 But many of them, on this subject, are care 
 less, selfish and inconsiderate. 
 
 Against this awful calamity many of the 
 American clergy have set their faces. Some 
 require that all candidates coming to them 
 for marriage shall bring a physician s cer 
 tificate of health. All honor to these men; 
 but it is doubtful that they can succeed as 
 well as they deserve to. For unworthy or 
 hesitating candidates are liable to seek less 
 exacting clergy, or to bring certificates from 
 accommodating physicians, or from those 
 who are careless and superficial in their 
 examinations, or who know little of the 
 modern methods of hunting for the gono- 
 coccus, and who therefore make number 
 less mistakes. I heartily wish that it were 
 possible to make such a regulation of mar 
 riage, that could be effectively carried out, 
 for it is needed as almost no other reform. 
 
 The medical profession is striving in the 
 same direction as the clergy, and a new doc 
 trine in medical ethics was promulgated in 
 
 99 
 
AM I REALLY 
 
 1912, by what is, in its influence, the great 
 est medical authority in the world. That is 
 the American Medical Association. It is a 
 nation-wide, enormous, non-sectarian body; 
 its conditions of membership are correct 
 conduct, uprightness, and knowledge ; not 
 theology or even belief as to the best way to 
 cure the sick. Its requirements are general 
 education, and knowledge of the human 
 body, its anatomy, its physiology and pa 
 thology, its bacteriology and chemistry, and 
 the influences of its environment that may 
 affect it, by accident or design. Its member 
 ship is in every part of the country (includ 
 ing our far-away possessions), and its influ 
 ence is everywhere for the good of the 
 people. 
 
 More than a half century ago this Asso 
 ciation promulgated a "Code of Medical 
 Ethics" that stands as one of the finest ex 
 pressions of personal and professional ethics 
 in all history; it is based on the Golden 
 Rule and the spirit of Christ. In 1903, de 
 siring a briefer and simpler statement, it 
 adopted a shorter instrument, known as the 
 "Principles of Medical Ethics," and in 1912 
 it revised these Principles and added a new 
 one, which constitutes a new doctrine in so 
 cial morals. Always, one of its cardinal 
 principles has been that the physician should 
 
 100 
 
MY BROTHER S KEEPER?- . 
 
 hold in sacred confidence anything he learns 
 about the patient in his examinations made 
 in order to treat him. This last enactment 
 reiterates that doctrine (a doctrine that is 
 more than two thousand years old), and 
 with a proviso that to some may seem start 
 ling, but which is founded in essential jus 
 tice, and has been followed independently 
 by some physicians for many years. Listen 
 to the beginning paragraphs : 
 
 "A profession has for its prime ob 
 ject the service it can render to 
 humanity ; reward or financial gain 
 should be a subordinate consideration. 
 The practice of medicine is a profes 
 sion. In choosing the profession an 
 individual assumes an obligation to 
 conduct himself in accord with its 
 ideals." 
 
 "Patience and delicacy should char 
 acterize all the acts of a physician. 
 The confidences concerning individual 
 or domestic life entrusted by a patient 
 to a physician, and the defects of dis 
 position or flaws of character observed 
 in patients during medical attendance 
 should be held as a trust, and should 
 never be revealed except when im 
 peratively required by the laws of 
 the State." 
 
 101 
 
AM I REALLY 
 
 Then comes the proviso that qualifies 
 what stands before, and here it is: 
 
 "There are occasions, however, 
 when a physician must determine 
 whether or not his duty to society 
 requires him to take definite action to 
 protect a healthy individual from be 
 coming infected, because the physi 
 cian has knowledge, obtained through 
 the confidences entrusted to him as a 
 physician, of a communicable disease 
 to which the healthy individual is 
 about to be exposed. In such a case, 
 the physician should act as he would 
 desire another to act toward one of 
 his own family under like circum 
 stances." 
 
 This proviso means one thing, and one 
 only, namely, the altar, and the danger to 
 the health and life of a woman. It means 
 that the physician may now say to his pa 
 tient, as a thousand times he would like to 
 say: "Your confidences in my keeping as 
 your physician are sacred unless you are 
 likely, through your infirmities, to commit a 
 crime that is little short of manslaughter. 
 You cannot commit that crime, with my 
 knowledge of the facts in the case, without 
 involving me in some constructive participa 
 tion in the offense. I will not take that re 
 sponsibility and follow you in that iniquity, 
 
 102 
 
MY BROTHER S KEEPER? 
 
 and you shall not do it. Your recklessness, 
 your belief in what you do not know, and 
 your foolhardiness may lead you to wish to 
 neglect this injunction, but you shall not 
 neglect it. If I knew that you were about 
 to destroy your neighbor s house, I would be 
 legally guilty as an accessory before the 
 fact, if I did not notify the authorities. Now, 
 you propose, with my knowledge, to do a 
 thing a thousand times worse than to de 
 stroy a house, and you would do this to a 
 woman whom you profess to love and re 
 spect. More than by any statute I am bound 
 in honor to stop you if I can and I can." 
 
 Will the physician have the courage and 
 humanity to say that? It will take courage 
 to say it, but he will not falter for these 
 words will ring in his ears : "In such a case, 
 the physician should act as he would desire 
 another to act toward one of his own family 
 under like circumstances." He will not fal 
 ter, for that woman is his sister and his 
 daughter. 
 
 In a strong modern play called "Damaged 
 Goods," the doctor, in effect, says to the 
 man : "I have warned you of the calamity 
 you are likely to produce, and I wash my 
 hands of any further responsibility you 
 take the risk and the responsibility." That is 
 the old rule ; and it is pitifully insufficient. 
 The American physician will take the fur- 
 
 103 
 
AM I REALLY 
 
 ther step, and if necessary, warn the woman 
 or her parents. 
 
 Nor does this new rule lower the loyalty 
 of the physician to mankind; rather it en 
 larges it by extending his responsibility to 
 the community; not merely to the patient, 
 but also to his friends and neighbors. The 
 physician s duty is to his clients and to the 
 community. 
 
 The new doctrine is not for the spread of 
 any form of religion or politics, but is for the 
 benefit of the natural rights of all women, 
 children and men, not to have their physical 
 welfare and their social interests outraged. 
 One of the doctor s prescriptions the patient 
 may ignore or violate, namely, the order for 
 his medicine; but the other prescription, 
 that the patient must not, through his in 
 firmity, endanger others, he may not ignore, 
 because if he does he may commit construc 
 tive manslaughter, and even ruthlessly in 
 volve his physician with him. When the 
 doctor warns a patient with diphtheria or 
 smallpox, that he must stay at home and 
 keep off the street, if he violates the injunc 
 tion, the physician promptly and properly 
 notifies the neighbors to avoid him. If, un 
 der such circumstances, he fails so to notify, 
 he is guilty as an accessory, and his neigh 
 bors, if not the law, will so hold him. 
 
 But I hear you ask: Would you convict 
 
 104 
 
MY BROTHER S KEEPER? 
 
 every young man who asks an honest wo 
 man to marry him? No. But I say this 
 and conscious of the meaning of words and 
 of the way words fly, and after the confi 
 dences of the sick, through several decades 
 that the infection of bridegrooms is suf 
 ficiently common to make it the duty of 
 every man of them to concede the right of 
 the woman and her parents to know that he 
 is clean. And every worthy man of them 
 has the courage to be willing to bring the 
 proof, and to bring it. Furthermore, it is 
 his duty to bring the proof without being 
 asked. 
 
 Men and women are led into sin occasion 
 ally by intent, more often by blunders, more 
 often still by pure foolishness, and this is an 
 indictment against a large part of the human 
 race. It is an indictment that holds espe 
 cially against many masculine youths. The 
 girls may be as foolish as the boys, but they 
 have a less harmful sort of folly. It is the 
 young man at the inflated time of life when 
 he has an ambition to know about the world 
 and to experiment with it, who is in peril. 
 Up to a certain point his fear, self-respect 
 and caution protect him. Pray God they 
 may always protect him. But a few high 
 balls or their equivalent of beer may easily 
 weaken his caution, increase his vanity and 
 the sense of his own importance, and make 
 
 105 
 
AM I REALLY 
 
 him reckless. Then, if it is night, he may 
 become like a prowling cat, ready for several 
 sorts of adventure that he would not like to 
 see illustrated by flashlight photographs the 
 next day. Thus one act of foolishness leads 
 to another. The pity of it is that the youth 
 may emerge from a single adventure handi 
 capped for life. That is a terrible penalty, 
 and one apparently out of all proportion to 
 the offense. One act of foolishness ; then an 
 inexorable, withering blight that lasts as 
 long as life and even shortens life. Nothing 
 can fit such a case but a prayer a prayer 
 that may be commended to many men and 
 some women who are much older than the 
 stumbling boy and the prayer is : "Lord, be 
 merciful to me, a fool." 
 
 "No pity, Lord, could change the heart 
 From red with wrong to white as wool ; 
 
 The rod must heal the sin : but Lord, 
 Be merciful to me, a fool. 
 
 " Tis not by guilt the onward sweep 
 Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay : 
 
 Tis by our follies that so long 
 
 We hold the earth from heaven away. 
 
 "These clumsy feet, still in the mire, 
 Go crushing blossoms without end ; 
 
 These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust 
 Among the heart-strings of a friend. 
 
 106 
 
MY BROTHER S KEEPER? 
 
 "The ill-timed truth we might have kept 
 Who knows how sharp it pierced and 
 stung? 
 
 The word we had not sense to say 
 Who knows how grandly it had rung? 
 
 "Our faults no tenderness should ask, 
 
 The chastening stripes must cleanse them 
 all; 
 
 But for our blunders oh, in shame 
 Before the eyes of heaven we fall. 
 
 "Earth bears no balsam for mistakes; 
 
 Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool 
 That did his will ; but Thou, O Lord, 
 
 Be merciful to me, a fool!" 
 
 107 
 
The Ultimate Goal 
 
The Ultimate Goal* 
 
 I shall spare you any stale compliments 
 for your bright eyes and beautiful faces. 
 Perhaps the students assembled here to be 
 gin a year s work in higher education, are 
 no better looking, have no brighter eyes or 
 faces than the average of those who are ca 
 pable of being a part of such an assemblage 
 in almost any other part of the country. 
 
 The business ahead of you is so serious 
 that you are entitled in this hour to some 
 thing more than agreeable platitudes and 
 flowers. There are some lessons of worth, 
 outside the curriculum, that can help some 
 what to insure that you shall reach the goal 
 of commencement time, when diplomas and 
 bouquets and banners will be in order. 
 
 If one of the most advanced of your num 
 ber should take this platform and say what 
 in his judgment are the most important les 
 sons, they would probably be somewhat dif- 
 
 * An address delivered at the opening of the college year at 
 the University of Southern California in 1913. 
 
 Ill 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOAL 
 
 ferent from those of one who has seen many 
 such annual assemblages, and followed mul 
 titudes of the students through their school, 
 and after-school, lives. 
 
 It is those with long experience and ample 
 perspective who have best learned the 
 wholesome truths that about the most 
 beautiful thing on earth is a little child ; that 
 the most inspiring sight in any city, to the 
 lovers of mankind, is the children going to 
 school in the morning; and that altogether 
 the most wonderful thing is a lot of young 
 people in one of our higher institutions of 
 learning. 
 
 Of a hundred of your own number, how 
 many will fail and drop by the wayside be 
 fore graduation time? How many will die 
 of accident or sickness in the midst of their 
 school life? How many will finally succeed 
 fairly well, how many very well, how few 
 reach the top, or near the top of the ladder 
 of success that every one of you hopes for? 
 Of course there is no answer to such ques 
 tions ; but they suggest the vicissitudes, the 
 casualties, the successes and failures of a 
 protracted war. The urgent problem is to 
 lessen the casualties and increase the suc 
 cesses. 
 
 The greatest wish for good that any friend 
 can have for you is the best success that you 
 are capable of; that you may put your ca- 
 
 112 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOAL 
 
 pacities to the best use, and hedge against 
 griefs and disappointments; that you may 
 have the greatest sum total of happiness 
 throughout your existence, whether here or 
 hereafter, for this is the basis of all sane am 
 bition and of the ethics of life mark you, I 
 say the greatest sum total of happiness, not 
 necessarily the greatest for any hour or day 
 to be followed by a recoil of pain, but the 
 greatest aggregate. 
 
 To those who have fared far toward an 
 intellectual life there are a few lessons that 
 promise students some better margin of 
 safety from trouble, more economical use of 
 their powers and opportunities, some guard 
 against pitfalls, stumblings and handicaps 
 for life. Let me mention a few of them. 
 
 The first injunction ought to be to avoid 
 conceit. Don t imagine that you know all 
 of any subject. There are but few foundation 
 principles that may not be changed any day 
 by some new discovery. A few truths of 
 mathematics and some axioms of human 
 conduct and rules of social life stand through 
 all the centuries, but this is an age of scien 
 tific methods and development; and theories 
 are prone to change. So we should restrain 
 our egotism, and cultivate humility in the 
 presence of any new knowledge so long as 
 it is real. 
 
 You will find that even the members of 
 
 113 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOAL 
 
 the faculty do not all agree on every subject ; 
 or perhaps wholly agree on any subject. 
 This means that there are many sides to 
 most questions, and that human judgments 
 and viewpoints vary as men differ. If the fac 
 ulty cannot always agree it hardly seems 
 profitable for freshmen to take on airs of as 
 surance, or for sophomores to look bored. 
 
 Try to be teachable, and learn how to be ; 
 practice introspection for improvement ; and 
 when some fellow student or teacher says 
 you are in error, stop and think whether this 
 is true, and don t be rebellious just because 
 it is you who happen to be criticised ; you 
 are probably not made of much better clay 
 than your fellows. The average student 
 repeats the same blunders in writing, speak 
 ing or calculating, after he has been told of 
 them. This is because the error has not 
 come to him as a shock, as a sin, or a humil 
 iation, and nothing short of this is usually 
 effective. We usually act according to our 
 fixed habits unless and until jarred out of 
 them by some such influence. Education 
 means the creation of new and better habits, 
 otherwise cerebral automatisms, and the de 
 struction of those that are wrong or useless. 
 This is all there is of education. It is a hard 
 process. 
 
 Let one of your teachers give you a mid 
 term written examination; let him blue-pen- 
 
 114 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOAL 
 
 cil every error he can discover in statement, 
 spelling, punctuation, and grammar, and 
 hand you back your papers with the request 
 that you study the blue marks. Will you 
 avoid in your final examination similar er 
 rors? Perhaps one in five of you will. The 
 other four will continue to perpetrate the 
 same barbarisms, all because they have not 
 received the necessary emotional shock to 
 help inhibit a wrong habit, and allow a new 
 and better one to start. 
 
 There was a man of forty who from boy 
 hood had constantly kept his finger nails 
 gnawed short. In childhood he had bitter 
 aloes and other disagreeable things put on 
 his fingers ; his hands had been incased in 
 mittens, and he had been punished severely, 
 and in spite of it all he had clung to his vi 
 cious habit; or his habit had clung to him. 
 One day a friend seeking the services of a 
 superior lady manicurist, invited him to go 
 along. After she had finished with the 
 friend, the latter said, "Now please fix this 
 fellow s hands; his fingernails are disgrace 
 ful, but maybe you can improve them a lit 
 tle." The victim blushingly protested, but 
 finally submitted to her ministrations, which 
 seemed to make a great impression on him. 
 She made his fingers a little more presenta 
 ble and finally said, looking out of two beau 
 tiful eyes, "Now, sir, don t you think that 
 
 115 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOAL 
 
 looks better than the way you had fixed 
 them ?" The shock was sufficient ; the fellow 
 never afterwards gnawed his fingernails. 
 
 Many years ago in the Northwestern Uni 
 versity, when Bishop Fowler was President, 
 a certain theological student was untidy and 
 unclean, even filthy in his personal habits. 
 He refused or failed to take baths, and no 
 importunity nor the jibes of his fellow stu 
 dents had any effect upon him. Repeated 
 complaints were made to the President who 
 finally sent for the man to come to his resi 
 dence on a certain evening. He came and 
 Doctor Fowler had an intimate and friendly 
 conversation with him about his studies, his 
 ambitions, his prospects in the college and 
 in life. Then he invited him to kneel and 
 join in prayer. The Doctor prayed earnestly 
 that this student might succeed, that he 
 might be a credit to himself, to the Univer 
 sity, and to the community in which he 
 might live ; that he might be a personal 
 example to all men and especially to all 
 youths. After the prayer he thanked the 
 student for his call and their nice visit, and 
 handed him a small and securely done up 
 package, saying: "I want you to take this 
 package home, and pray for divine guidance 
 before you open it." Then he bade him good 
 night. The package contained a cake of 
 soap. The shock was sufficient; the fellow 
 
 116 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOAL 
 
 became from that day an exemplary student. 
 
 Once in Throop College of Technology 
 there was a similar case, only the students 
 handled it, not the President. The students 
 administered the soap, and it was perma 
 nently effective. 
 
 Avoid drifting into unprofitable lines sim 
 ply because others drift. Have some indi 
 viduality; don t be like sheep or geese. The 
 force that often leads us wrong is a custom 
 or a fashion in some sort. The weaker 
 among us almost instinctively follow new 
 fashions whether good or bad, if we see oth 
 ers doing it ; and we too seldom stop to ask 
 if the new fashion is worth while. 
 
 We are all more or less slaves to fashion 
 in many things beside clothes. How fash 
 ions come about we rarely know very much, 
 although in the back of our brains there is a 
 vague guess that they must be ordered by 
 some superior power of good taste, residing 
 somewhere, but never here. If we thought 
 them any less sacred we would certainly re 
 spect some of them the less. Today in 
 numerous wholesale millinery establish 
 ments, shrewd men and women are putting 
 their heads together to make the fashions in 
 ladies hats for next season. Not what they 
 ought to be, but what they shall be for the 
 purpose of making money for the house by 
 selling them the whole thing is vulgarly 
 
 117 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOAL 
 
 mercenary. No university faculty is more 
 shrewd than these people are in their study 
 of what women bought and wore last year 
 and the year before, and what they may 
 probably be induced to buy next year. 
 Having agreed on the styles that are likely 
 to win, these are pictured, advertised, de 
 scribed and sent broadcast over the country 
 as the fashions that will prevail. Nothing 
 matches the keenness with which this trap 
 is set for us, except the ease, even the haste, 
 with which we walk into it. 
 
 There was once in Chicago a good man by 
 the name of Mason who was in the life-in 
 surance business. He arrived one day in 
 Galesburg on a morning train to remain dur 
 ing the day and to interview numerous peo 
 ple. When he arrived he found that his 
 trousers were torn, and he went to a cloth 
 ing merchant to borrow a pair until his own 
 could be mended ; he would call in the even 
 ing to change back again. He was not par 
 ticular about the pattern to be loaned him 
 for the day. "Then," said the merchant, "I 
 will give you one from this pile, for I have 
 not sold a single pair out of the lot." It was 
 a pile of loud plaids, that no man in unin 
 fluenced sanity would ever willingly buy or 
 wear. Mason was about town all day; he 
 was a striking personality, and he wore 
 striking nether clothes the like of which 
 118 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOAL 
 
 nobody in Galesburg had seen before ; more 
 over he was very soon known to hail from 
 Chicago. 
 
 When he went to get his own clothes in 
 the evening, the merchant was in high spir 
 its. He had sold six pairs of the outlandish 
 plaids during the day. So at least six men 
 in one day were fooled into buying and 
 wearing a garment which they hated, sim 
 ply because they guessed that it must be the 
 fashion in Chicago. All the simpletons do 
 not reside in Galesburg, or Illinois. The 
 race of them is enormous, and some of us 
 belong to it. 
 
 We tend to follow the fashion closely, and 
 fall into the general stream ; or, we avoid 
 this because it may seem to be absurd, and 
 follow it from afar or not at all; or, if we 
 have a peculiar brand of conceit we may 
 defy the fashion and do any one of many 
 erratic things to fix the attention of others 
 upon us and the more the attention the 
 more we are flattered even if the attention 
 be solely ridicule. I once had a classmate 
 who had a very abundant beard which he 
 allowed to grow to a mass two feet long and 
 a foot wide and to cover his mouth so that 
 nobody ever saw it for twenty years. He 
 felt flattered when people referred to it 
 even if they told him he was an idiot. 
 
 To the common mind the very common 
 
 119 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOAL 
 
 mind whatever the majority are doing or 
 are presumptively about to do, must be cor 
 rect, and ought to be followed with all haste. 
 In Sierra Madre some few years ago were 
 two little boys playing together. They wore 
 short trousers and short socks, exposing 
 their knees and legs. Another little boy was 
 brought from the East in long stockings and 
 knickerbockers to play with them. Within 
 two days he was begging for short trousers 
 and short socks, so as to be like the other 
 boys. Had there been two boys from the 
 East and only one in Sierra Madre, the lat 
 ter would probably have asked for the knick 
 erbockers. Are University students above or 
 superior to the very common mind? 
 
 Students in all schools will follow many 
 fashions in ways and notions as well as 
 clothes ; this is unavoidable, and with com 
 mon sense in the saddle, it is not undesirable. 
 Some of your elders remember the days of 
 tight shoes, the shame of big hands and 
 feet, of abundant hair made sleek with hair- 
 oil, and of very trim clothes and delicate 
 manners. Now, thanks to more athletics 
 and more sense, we have come to glorify big 
 feet, hands and muscles, rough clothes and 
 tousled hair. And the promise of power and 
 efficiency has glorified awkwardness. The 
 thing to remember is that the line of con 
 duct we adopt at school, in our dealings 
 
 120 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOAL 
 
 with customs and fashions, will, as sure as 
 fate, color our conduct and character for 
 life. The logical thing is to cultivate some 
 individuality, and refuse to be slavish in 
 these matters ; if we start on this basis we 
 are sure of a better career. One of the most 
 foolish of all slaveries in school or out of it, 
 is the sporadic fad that it is weak or cow 
 ardly to "take a dare." Less worthy students 
 repeatedly lead the more worthy to make 
 themselves ridiculous, if not to imperil their 
 lives, because of this shallow obsession. It 
 is as bad as the fetish of duelling among 
 gentlemen of the South during the last 
 century, a fetish that has melted away be 
 fore the more wholesome social basis of this 
 practical time. 
 
 Another truth we much need to learn is 
 that there are at least two kinds of human 
 conscience; that of the class and that of the 
 individual. The class conscience moves us 
 to follow the crowd, to go w r ith the current, 
 to join the mob ; the individual conscience is 
 the product of our personal judgment and 
 individual inclinations, undisturbed by ei 
 ther the huzzas or the imprecations of the 
 multitude. Classes as a whole have certain 
 rules and doctrines that as individuals we 
 have difficulty in subscribing to, but that we 
 follow because we belong to the class. 
 
 A few years ago there was a near riot at 
 
 121 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOAL 
 
 Stanford University in which a lot of good 
 men fell into frenzy and did some wild 
 things because the authorities took meas 
 ures to prevent drinking on the part of stu 
 dents, whether on the campus or outside of 
 it. They were furious in their opposition to 
 interference and they lampooned their slug 
 gish fellows in an effort to rally them to the 
 defense of the student body, and to stand by 
 their first declaration that they would fight 
 to the end. Left to themselves individually, 
 not one in ten would have taken an attitude 
 of such unpopularity, which seemed to the 
 public to favor liquor-drinking in a univer 
 sity. 
 
 Recently a great discussion has been go 
 ing on in educational and popular journals 
 on a subject entitled "Who Broke the Win 
 dow?" A teacher put this conundrum to the 
 public : There were two boys in school, one 
 was called Good and the other Bad. Good 
 saw Bad break a window of the schoolhouse 
 with a rock, and Bad knew that Good had 
 seen him throw the rock. The teacher asked 
 Good if he knew who broke the window. 
 Good answered that he did. The teacher 
 asked him who it was. Good declined to 
 tell. Did Good do right? 
 
 Probably a hundred letters, possibly twice 
 as many, have been written to various maga 
 zines and journals telling why the writers 
 
 122 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOAL 
 
 thought Good did right or wrong in refus 
 ing to divulge the name of the offender. 
 A very few said Good did wrong; that he 
 ought to have told, whatever the conse 
 quences. The vast majority of the answers 
 took the opposite ground, but many of them 
 showed a lack of appreciation of the true 
 moral situation in the case. The majority 
 have conceived that in the ethics of youth 
 Good could not tell on Bad (which is prob 
 ably correct), and they have tried to see in 
 it some universal principle of ethics, but it 
 is not there. The principle is founded in 
 fear of the class conscience, and the class 
 punishment that is the sentence of the boy 
 who tells. There can be no principle of es 
 sential world ethics that would justify Good 
 in conniving at, and being an accessory to 
 such a piece of destructive wickedness on 
 the part of another. He was afraid to an 
 swer, but he would not have refused to an 
 swer if he had seen Bad kill his own sister 
 instead of throwing a rock at the window. 
 He would have been prompt to give infor 
 mation of such a crime, for he would have 
 been guilty of felony if he had failed to do 
 so; then he would have had the fear of the 
 law, and his class conscience would have ad 
 mitted his justification, as it would perhaps 
 never justify him in the case of destruction 
 of a window. 
 
 123 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOAL 
 
 As between the murder and the peccadillo 
 there is no difference, save in degree, and 
 between these two extremes of offense there 
 are all shades of gradation. In the twilight 
 zone between them, who shall draw the line 
 and say just where the peccadillos end, and 
 the crimes begin, and therefore where Good 
 might tell, and where he must refuse to tell ? 
 
 It is a futile contention to say that Good 
 should have told the truth and convicted 
 Bad, for such a contention gets us nowhere 
 the boys will not follow such a rule. But 
 there is no occasion to dignify as a principle 
 of high ethics a rule founded in fear of one s 
 class really an unwritten compact that 
 gives protection to any one who cares to 
 throw a rock in the sight of his fellows, but 
 not at them. 
 
 Nor do I intend to sermonize on the value 
 of more individual and less class conscience. 
 We must follow both varyingly at different 
 times. Most certainly we cannot dispense 
 with the class conscience, for of it are pa 
 triotism, saving family pride, and self-re 
 spect. To know and to differentiate the two 
 kinds of conscience is to have some intelli 
 gent power to regulate them ; and that is 
 about all we need. 
 
 It is a great achievement to be imperturb 
 able. The basis of perturbability in school 
 is a sort of diffidence in the presence of 
 
 124 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOAL 
 
 others, and this diffidence is egoistic, and is 
 akin to cowardice. When we are called on 
 to recite we blush, hesitate, perhaps stam 
 mer, we are humiliated by our hot ears and 
 cheeks, are afraid we shall say something to 
 be laughed at, and so fail to do ourselves 
 justice we cannot do our best. The remedy 
 is first a sense of humor, then courage to 
 stand on our own moral feet, and sink our 
 petty thoughts about ourselves as of what 
 we are doing or shall do with our hands and 
 feet, and whether or not our hats or our 
 neckties are on straight. We should be 
 amused at being laughed at, and be proof 
 against annoyance at any jokes upon our 
 selves. We always play jokes on people 
 who are annoyed at them never or very 
 rarely on those who join in the amusement 
 from them, and tell about them afterward. 
 Worry about our studies is a destructive 
 emotion. Most good thinking is done rest- 
 fully and deliberately. Many of us keep in 
 a fume throughout the college course, and 
 fearing humiliations ahead of us we tensely 
 cram for recitations and for examinations 
 waste energy shamefully, working into the 
 nodding hours of the night and then come 
 to the issue with confusion of mind, with our 
 fright still upon us, and in poor condition 
 for creditable work. The late Prof. L. in 
 his final college examinations surprised his 
 
 125 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOAL 
 
 fellows by passing with very high marks. 
 As he had not been seen for several days 
 they supposed he had hidden himself some 
 where for the purpose of cramming. But he 
 was taking long tranquil walks over the New 
 England hills, trying, without a note or 
 book, to recall to mind the whole course of 
 study that the examinations could possibly 
 cover. So he came up to the ordeal with a 
 tranquil mind and a consciousness of power. 
 
 The greatest need of us all is to avoid 
 physical injuries and misfortunes that may 
 handicap us for life and handicaps come 
 easily. We are physical machines just ani 
 mals, theoretically superior animals, and it 
 behooves us to take care of our bodies with 
 at least as much care as we would bestow 
 upon our dogs and cattle. 
 
 Every fellow wishes and ought to deserve 
 to succeed, and make a good race in school 
 or college and after it, for a career in life 
 that shall be to his liking. But a broken 
 ankle, a damaged eye, a cracked skull, a 
 pleurisy or a spot of tuberculosis in a lung, 
 will instantly cut the percentage of certainty 
 of success from seventy-five down to forty 
 or fifty. It is a sin for any man to destroy 
 so large a margin of his own prospects by 
 an accident or disease that is preventable. 
 
 126 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOAL 
 
 Athletics are commendable, but should be 
 further protected against casualties. Some 
 of the best physical caretaking is in the ex 
 perience of the athletic team. Why don t 
 all the students live by such a regimen as 
 that of the athletic team? Because we are 
 unable or unwilling to forego the pleasures 
 of the hour for future benefit and a greater 
 aggregate of happiness and glory. And the 
 philosophers everywhere and through all the 
 ages have preached against this waste, and 
 with not enough success to boast of. 
 
 Here are a few final facts bearing on this 
 subject: Tuberculosis destroys from ten to 
 twelve per cent of us all. When it occurs 
 in a lung it is over twice as fatal in habitual 
 tobacco users as in non-users. Outdoor 
 sleeping or fresh-air sleeping-rooms, and 
 long hours in bed, lessen by a large percent 
 age the chances of acquiring tuberculosis 
 and some other infectious diseases. 
 
 If the students will so clothe themselves 
 that they can bear a great amount of fresh 
 air, cold or warm, in their school rooms, and 
 then insist on having it at all times, they 
 will probably gain, as shown by recent ex 
 periments with open-air schools, about five 
 per cent in their progress, and even more in 
 their escape from disease and breakdowns in 
 the midst of the course. Remember that 
 there should be admitted into the school 
 
 127 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOAL 
 
 room many hundred cubic feet of fresh air 
 per hour for each person; and that the best 
 study work is done out of doors even by 
 weakly people who invariably gain in vigor 
 in the outdoor schools. 
 
 Alcoholic stimulants cut down the effi 
 ciency of all brain workers, as recently 
 shown by the most searching scientific in 
 vestigations. Numerous German professors 
 have cut out completely their lifelong habits 
 of beer and wine, not because they think it 
 wicked to take them, but for better health, 
 more power, longer life. 
 
 To the American college student the tak 
 ing of alcoholic beverages to produce ap 
 preciable cerebral effect is fraught with dan 
 ger of nameless calamities that may in a day 
 blight a life career. In this way have been 
 permanently handicapped or destroyed many 
 hundreds of the best youth of the land. 
 Verily, the smokeless powder and the noise 
 less bullet are the most dangerous of all. 
 Verbum sat sapienti. 
 
 128 
 
Edward Waller Claypole, 
 the Man 
 
Edward Waller Claypole, 
 the Man* 
 
 There is no other lesson in all the universe 
 which transcends that of a human life. This 
 is a primal truth notwithstanding the fact 
 that the history of no human life is ever 
 completely told. Whether we know the 
 whole or part matters little, so long as we 
 see the lesson. 
 
 The careers of men are largely determined 
 by accident, and the fate of environment. 
 Opportunity has made some mediocre men 
 great in the pageantry of the world; while 
 some of the greatest of all time have led 
 quiet and unblazoned lives for want of some 
 accident to let them win a battle or be 
 one out of a score of students to find the 
 epoch truth they all were groping after and 
 knew must be near. Thus many of the esti 
 mates of history are inadequate or wrong. 
 
 *Address at memorial exercises Throop College of Tech 
 nology, Pasadena, Cal., Sept. 26, 1901. 
 
 131 
 
EDWARD WALLER CLAYPOLE 
 
 It is the character of a man that measures 
 him and by which his value to his kind is 
 finally told. And this is the quality that is 
 first born to him, and then must grow and 
 ripen and be hammered by the work and 
 impediments of his life. It is these that fix 
 every man s place somewhere in the equa 
 tions of the race. 
 
 While a man lives his character and career 
 are in the making. The final estimate can 
 never be made in life, for until its end the 
 evidence is never quite all in. Death alone 
 permits the case to be closed and submitted 
 to the judgment of history. History is said 
 to grow calm and judicial by time; it also 
 may grow hazy and unfair. It fixes on the 
 more tangible facts of a man s career, like 
 his battles, his campaigns or his recorded 
 acts, and deals more or less justly with them. 
 But it often misses the best part of him, 
 which is his character and work in the un- 
 turbulent calm of life, as these affect men 
 and women about him, and mould and 
 change them, and even create their careers 
 in life. 
 
 Who most have influenced the lives of 
 others? What lives so affected have most 
 changed the careers of still others? The 
 answers to these questions reveal the real 
 place of a man in society. 
 
 Professor Claypole s life comprised a vol- 
 
 132 
 
THE MAN 
 
 ume of numerous lessons and many kinds 
 of instruction. 
 
 Born in England and coming down from 
 a line of superior people and scholars on 
 both sides of his family, he inherited a love 
 of learning and a disposition to study 
 and work. His father and paternal grand 
 father were Baptist clergymen and fine 
 classical scholars, and his own taste was 
 naturally toward the classics and literature. 
 But in his childhood some cultivated women, 
 sisters of his remarkable mother, took him 
 out into the fields and showed him some of 
 the beauties and possibilities of botany and 
 geology, and his enthusiasm was instantly 
 aroused. Here was an opportunity to study 
 things, not merely the writings about things 
 and thoughts ; and the taste then created 
 continued through life; it determined his 
 career and made of him a great teacher and 
 an authority in science. 
 
 He was a voracious reader and student, a 
 devourer of encyclopedias and all manner of 
 the strongest books, even in childhood. 
 Taken once to a lecture on astronomy at 
 eleven years of age he startled his family 
 on reaching home by correcting the lecturer 
 as to some of his facts and figures, and did 
 it from memory of what he had read, un 
 known to his elders. 
 
 In pursuit of his education he met with 
 
 133 
 
EDWARD WALLER CLAYPOLE 
 
 difficulties. His clerical ancestors were dis 
 senters from the established church. For 
 this reason none of the teaching universi 
 ties in all England was open to him, and lack 
 of means made it impossible for him to go 
 to Scotland where he would have been ad 
 mitted, or to attend any of the fitting schools 
 in England. So with his father s aid and 
 his own efforts he fitted himself for and ac 
 complished matriculation at the University 
 of London, which is an examining, not a 
 teaching body, and was founded specially 
 for dissenters. But now because he had 
 been prepared by private study instead of 
 at some of the accredited schools, further 
 advancement was impossible and he had to 
 wait for some years until in 1859 the Uni 
 versity modified its rules, and admitted stu 
 dents who were prepared by any school or 
 by any means, to take its examination, and 
 gave degrees to those who had earned them. 
 Then he took there three degrees in succes 
 sion : B. A. in 1862, B. Sc. in 1864, and 
 D. Sc. 1888. 
 
 Teaching was his profession and he taught 
 all his working life except two years when 
 he was on the geological survey of Pennsyl 
 vania. For nearly a third of a century he 
 taught in collegiate institutions. He taught 
 many things, nearly the whole curriculum of 
 an ordinary college at different times, and 
 
 134 
 
THE MAN 
 
 everything with equal facility, but his spe 
 cialty was the natural sciences and particu 
 larly geology. His first ambition was to be 
 a civil engineer, not a teacher. He might 
 have made a good engineer, but it is certain 
 that he was a teacher born, as truly as men 
 are born gentlemen or geniuses. To his in 
 born powers he added the highest develop 
 ment of studied excellence. 
 
 The refinement of his art in this sort was 
 founded on his erudition, which was enor 
 mous ; on his enthusiasm for scientific truth ; 
 on his great manual dexterity ; on a remark 
 able gift of extempore drawing that made it 
 easy and interesting for him to illustrate his 
 work, and especially on the grace of his per 
 sonality and the terse and beautiful way in 
 which he said things without verbiage or 
 cant. His interest in the studies was so 
 genuine that it was infectious to his stu 
 dents. Whether in pursuit of some investiga 
 tion, or over a problem, or doing a manipu 
 lation, his patience was limitless. This 
 quality was impressive to his students as it 
 was to his colleagues. Then in all his earlier 
 years he was a leader among the boys in 
 out of door sports, a thing that is always a 
 bond between teacher and students. But he 
 had no sympathy with organized college 
 sports, and always doubted their ultimate 
 value. 
 
 135 
 
EDWARD WALLER CLAYPOLE 
 
 Pupils under him lost respect for them 
 selves in poor work and bad purposes; and 
 those of them who were worth saving to 
 an intellectual life became inspired to do 
 the best that was in them. More than that, 
 they acquired his methods of thought and 
 reasoning; his mental habits became theirs, 
 and they have gone out to transmit these 
 traits and impulses to others and through 
 these still to others, and so on in a chain of 
 influence that always exalts, and whereof no 
 man knows the end. 
 
 In his treatment of students he was gen 
 tleness itself. Only poor work and dishon 
 esty could rouse him to severity. He would 
 go to any length to help a sincere student 
 in genuine work ; but would never yield an 
 inch in his standard to let even such a stu 
 dent through his finals. He expected the 
 best of every student and usually got it. 
 Years ago there was once some formal criti 
 cism by his colleagues of his methods of 
 teaching, but the pupils of his critics were 
 few while his were many. The trouble was 
 that his lucid, realistic and practical way of 
 presenting his subject drew pupils, the very 
 thing that the modern university bids for. 
 
 Of a race of dissenting Baptists, it was 
 natural that he should find occupation as a 
 teacher in a Baptist college. It was a college 
 
 136 
 
THE MAN 
 
 for the education of ministers, a theological 
 school in which he taught for several years. 
 Strange that the theological basis there 
 should have been such that teaching the 
 simple truths of the classics and science in 
 a broad and manly way would unsettle 
 young men for the business of the minis 
 try ! Yet it did this and of course the teacher 
 had to go. And when he wished to teach 
 in a college in Wales and could not sub 
 scribe to its theology he was not accepted. 
 At this time there was not a college in Eng 
 land where he could teach, and to the Pres 
 byterian colleges of Scotland he would have 
 been equally unacceptable. 
 
 Then like the pilgrims of more than two 
 centuries before, and for similar reasons, he 
 came to America where there must, he 
 thought, be liberty to teach the truth freely. 
 But here he met with some disappointments 
 of the sort he had encountered in England. 
 It was his failing, if failing it is, that he must 
 teach the truth as he saw it. His loyalty 
 to the truth the fact proven was like a 
 religion to him. Evolution to him was the 
 way in which the purposes of Providence 
 are worked out; to renounce it would be 
 blasphemy. 
 
 His sacrifices for his loyalty to truth had 
 recompense at last; for he lived to see the 
 
 137 
 
EDWARD WALLER CLAYPOLE 
 
 doctrine of evolution defended by theolo 
 gians, and Darwin acknowledged to have 
 made the greatest contribution to thought of 
 the just ended century. The metamorphosis 
 had been as radical as that from the witch 
 craft laws of Massachusetts of old, to those 
 of the Commonwealth of today. He lived 
 to see Oxford and Cambridge accept dis 
 senting students without signing the 39 arti 
 cles, or swearing that the Queen was the 
 head of the church; to see the University 
 of London open its doors to women (his 
 own wife received high honors there) and 
 bestow its degrees on any student who 
 could pass its examinations. He had de 
 clined to come up for his doctor s degree as 
 long as an examination for which one could 
 cram was required; he could have crammed 
 for it easily, but he believed this degree 
 should be given for original work only ; and 
 finally, long after he had come to America, 
 the University came to his way of thinking, 
 and then he crossed the ocean and, on the 
 strength of his original work on the geology 
 of Pennsylvania and Ohio, received the de 
 gree of Doctor of Science. 
 
 As a scholar he was exact and accurate; 
 he hewed to the line as though by instinct. 
 He did not try to remember everything, but 
 he tried first to understand everything he 
 read or considered, and then as a matter of 
 
 138 
 
THE MAN 
 
 fact he did remember nearly everything, and 
 he could usually at a moment s notice lay 
 his hands on any fact or reference he needed. 
 
 As a scientist speaking to the world he 
 was slow and painstaking lest he might send 
 forth an immature message. It was modesty 
 and self-effacement as well as love of truth 
 that led to this, qualities the lack of which has 
 tempted men to rush into print with un- 
 proven facts and lame theories. He had a 
 great aversion for unpondered declarations 
 and unverified theories. This led him to a 
 degree of scrupulosity that probably retarded 
 his publications and restricted his fame ; but it 
 could not lessen his worth. Evanescent fame 
 and especially the plaudits of the unthinking 
 had the least possible charm for him. To 
 strive for such things wittingly would have 
 been a degradation of his self-respect. 
 
 In spite of his caution, his contributions 
 to knowledge were large. They did not take 
 the form of books, but were mostly articles 
 contributed to numerous scientific journals, 
 proceedings of learned societies and official 
 reports published by government. Their 
 number mounted into the hundreds and cov 
 ered not only geology in which he was most 
 interested, but many fields of science be 
 sides, as well as literature and general learn 
 ing. What a labor is represented in all this 
 writing and revision ! What erudition and 
 
 139 
 
EDWARD WALLER CLAYPOLE 
 
 study it stands for! Yet it only expressed 
 the work of his mind and hand as it came 
 along day by day. For him to attempt to 
 write a great paper merely to astonish the 
 world was unthinkable. He wrote when, in 
 his investigations or those of others, a word 
 came to him that demanded utterance. And 
 his investigations were going on constantly. 
 The new theories and principles which he 
 promulgated were mostly fated to stand. 
 There was a shower of opposition and argu 
 ment against some of them, but the final 
 verdict of science has confirmed him in al 
 most every instance. 
 
 He began in youth the habit of writing 
 for serial publications. When he was but 17 
 he joined a brother in editing and publish 
 ing a student s paper called "The Home 
 Journal/ It appeared monthly, and the edi 
 tion was usually limited to one copy. It 
 was not printed, but written by his own pre 
 cise hand, and illuminated by drawings as 
 perfect as a modern lithograph. These 
 last gave promise of the fine drawings that 
 later illustrated his scientific papers. It was 
 contributed to by his several brothers and 
 himself, and it contained no student gossip, 
 jokes or editorials on the way to run a 
 college, but strong articles on science and 
 literature, as e.g.,: "The Rise and Prog 
 ress of Language," "The Causes that Led 
 
 140 
 
THE MAN 
 
 to the Restoration of Charles II.," "The At 
 traction of Gravitation," and "Conscience." 
 The articles all show painstaking care and 
 much study. 
 
 His taste for serious journalism continued 
 through life and he wrote extensively for 
 scientific periodicals, especially those de 
 voted to geology. He was one of the foun 
 ders, and always one of the editors, of the 
 "American Geologist," begun in 1888, and 
 wrote for it a large number of articles, re 
 views and criticisms. 
 
 It was his fortune to have made in 1884 
 in Perry county, Pennsylvania, the discov 
 ery of a new genus (two species) of fossil 
 fish in the Silurian rocks at a lower level 
 than any fish remains had been found be 
 fore. These were, as he then said, the "oldest 
 indisputable vertebrate animals which the 
 world has yet seen." He \vorked out the 
 specimens and the subject with great labor 
 and patience and named the species Palaeas- 
 pis americana and P. bitruncata. Although 
 his position about this discovery was con 
 troverted by many experts at the time, it 
 has never been shaken in the least from 
 that day to this. 
 
 The personal demeanor of this man was 
 so superior and refined as to be a model for 
 every man and the envy of many of them. 
 He was always gentle, never intense save 
 
 141 
 
EDWARD WALLER CLAYPOLE 
 
 when confronted by untruth and dishonor. 
 He was not combative yet keenly enjoyed 
 discussion ; if he were injured or felt himself 
 to be, he was silent. He would discuss but 
 never contend, unless it was for some vital 
 principle or against what he thought an in 
 justice ; and he never lost his temper or his 
 patience. Thereby he could always lift a 
 heated debate out of personalities and into 
 dignified discussion. He had an abiding 
 love of justice and would struggle for it, but 
 always with dignity. When a decision rested 
 with himself his judicial sense stood so erect 
 that it would sometimes tip backward. This 
 was the case especially when he had or could 
 have any personal interest in the decision. 
 If his own children were in his classes he 
 held them to a severer rule than the rest of 
 the students. With what he regarded as 
 public or private wrong he could never com 
 promise in the smallest degree. Like most 
 of the great reformers he never learned that 
 much of the best progress of the world 
 comes as a matter of compromise. Because 
 there was corruption in politics he could 
 rarely be induced to go to the polls to vote. 
 He enjoyed exercise and work. His fire 
 wood he bought in large sticks so that he 
 could have the exercise of sawing and split 
 ting it. His book-cases were mostly made 
 with his own hands, and he bound credit- 
 
 142 
 
THE MAN 
 
 ably many of his numerous volumes of 
 periodicals. Geologist and botanist that he 
 was, he enjoyed tramping over the country 
 and his students frequently went with him 
 to their delight and benefit. But sometimes 
 his tramps were too much for them, and 
 once they determined that they would tire 
 him out. So several of the strongest of them 
 planned a journey with him for this purpose. 
 They had saved their strength beforehand 
 and thought they were sure of victory, but 
 one by one they fell out of the squad, and 
 the last one to give up came back and re 
 ported that the professor had disappeared 
 over the hill with a step as elastic as that of 
 a boy. 
 
 His conversation was full of good fellow 
 ship, never rasping or aggressive. He had 
 little small talk. He had none of the qual 
 ity of the Bohemian, but he was a good com 
 panion, best always for the thoughtful and 
 seekers after knowledge. He rarely laughed 
 loudly, but as he spoke a smile often played 
 upon his countenance, a smile whose charm 
 could not be surpassed, for it shone with 
 refinement and intelligence. It was the smile 
 of the cultivated Englishman ; it never rose 
 to the wide-open laughter of those who are 
 quick to grasp American jokes ; and he 
 never came to appreciate these as the natives 
 do. 
 
 143 
 
EDWARD WALLER CLAYPOLE 
 
 His nature was a serious one always, and 
 he probably failed of some solace that might 
 have come to him had he been able to ap 
 preciate fully the jests, hyperbole, irony and 
 satire of this country. But he also lacked 
 the intensity and intemperance in thought, 
 speech and action, that make so many native 
 Americans need these aids to balance their 
 moods. It must not be understood that he 
 was devoid of humor. He had humor, but 
 it was rather as an infrequent and subtle 
 surprise and so the more enjoyable to the 
 few to whom it was ever revealed. 
 
 If he needed any balancing emotion it was 
 for a certain intensity of feeling that was 
 known only to his very intimates. This ap 
 peared at times in a degree of melancholy 
 shown in deep and unspoken grief at the 
 premature close of a career, or of a life at 
 the threshold of its usefulness. Calamities 
 within his own household put him to severe 
 tests of this kind. As the deepest waters 
 run still so his intensest feelings were com 
 pletely hidden from the world in general. 
 
 All of nature s sounds were meaningful to 
 him. The birds and the insects made music 
 for his ears, and it was harmony. But of 
 man s artificial harmonies the science alone 
 concerned him. He knew and was inter 
 ested in the sound that each pipe or string 
 of an instrument made, and why and how; 
 
 144 
 
THE MAN 
 
 and why the tones harmonized with each 
 other or failed to do so. But music was no 
 pleasure to him. Yet his own voice was 
 melody. No one who knew him ever heard 
 a man s voice that was more musical, and 
 no one of us ever heard it raised in anger or 
 discord. The knowledge seekers not only 
 found his voice beautiful, but doubly charm 
 ing because always laden with wisdom ; and 
 after they had listened for an hour to his 
 conversation on various subjects in a flow as 
 easy and modest as ever heard, as fresh as 
 a zephyr from the mountains, and in lan 
 guage so concise and pure that it would do 
 to print exactly as uttered, for the per 
 fected literature of our speech, they went 
 away feeling that somehow they had been 
 with a sage of the centuries. They actually 
 experienced one of the psychological mira 
 cles by acquiring as their own some of his 
 perspective grasp. He had calmed their 
 nervous tension and made them look for and 
 see things with a more certain and con 
 sciously certain vision. The effect was com 
 parable to the influence of General Grant on 
 his soldiers before one of the battles in Vir 
 ginia, when he simply rode down the line of 
 the army and observed everything in his in 
 imitable, quiet way. His words were few 
 and chiefly in the way of suggestion and 
 inquiry; not a loud word or one for mere 
 
 145 
 
EDWARD WALLER CLAYPOLE 
 
 effect, but every man who saw it, from being 
 nervous and impetuous suddenly became a 
 real soldier and examined his cartridges and 
 arms, and began to save his resources, which 
 before he had wasted, that he might be ready 
 for the time of need. 
 
 Prof. Claypole s tastes as the world uses 
 the word were severely simple. Show and 
 parade appealed to him but little. He was 
 himself wholly incapable of either. His 
 clothes were a necessity to him ; so he wore 
 them. He never had any pleasure in their 
 display. He was modest and retiring in all 
 his ways ; and never pushed himself or pre 
 ferred himself before others. He was never 
 a stickler for his personal rights ; therein he 
 belied certain definitions of Englishmen. He 
 would take an inconvenient lecture hour 
 without a complaint rather than ask a col 
 league to make a possibly not inconvenient 
 change to accommodate him. 
 
 Taught by his early experiences to prac 
 tice the most rigid economy, he continued 
 this through life. His personal wants were 
 few, and envy and jealousy seem to have 
 been left out of his nature. He was not 
 unhappy over the larger expenditure of his 
 neighbors, except because of its sometime 
 wastefulness when done for show. Had he 
 been more aggressive he doubtless might 
 have made money by his knowledge of geol- 
 
 146 
 
THE MAN 
 
 ogy, but scientists rarely become rich, even 
 when they give themselves to the work of 
 invention. 
 
 He was an ideal expert witness in court, 
 for he was so fair and candid, so amazing 
 in his information, and so evidently free from 
 any impulse to air his knowledge, that judge 
 aud jury always believed his testimony. 
 
 His public scientific lectures were master 
 pieces in substance and style. The test of 
 their perfection was the fact that those who 
 heard them usually absorbed their substance 
 and remembered them as a precious intel 
 lectual experience. 
 
 He was apparently emotion-blind to every 
 sentiment of egotism and conceit. He did 
 not care to be lionized or paraded ; he was 
 too great to need such attentions. He even 
 shunned having his photograph taken, and 
 the best picture of him had to be secured by 
 a ruse. While he walked daily among men 
 no one of whom was his peer in mentality 
 or equipment, he never betrayed to even his 
 friends by word or manner that he was con 
 scious of his superiority. He was unselfish 
 and unworldly, and in spirit as guileless and 
 exalted as the man of Nazareth. World 
 famous as a man of science, the recipient of 
 honors from the most famous of men, from 
 governments and educational institutions 
 throughout the world, he carried them all so 
 
 147 
 
EDWARD WALLER CLAYPOLE 
 
 modestly and quietly that his neighbors 
 hardly knew of them. 
 
 The purity of his personal and domestic 
 life, his devotion to his own, and especially 
 to his invalid wife, made an example for 
 men and angels, for there has been nothing 
 finer this side of the stars. The great truth 
 became incarnate in him early that only in a 
 life of unselfish service for others is there 
 perfect peace. That life he lived ideally to 
 the end, and it found him the joy that be 
 longs to the saints. For him there was no 
 far pilgrimage in search of the Holy Grail, 
 either for body or soul. He knew it was 
 within his reach every hour, and he daily 
 laid his hand upon it, was glad and unafraid. 
 No specific act or uttered formula for the 
 safety of his soul everlastingly was possible 
 for him. The whiteness of his living soul 
 and the reverent rectitude of his daily life 
 were the only talisman he needed or would 
 have. 
 
 To have come close to his great nature 
 was a mental and moral inspiration, and to 
 have known him thus was to love him al 
 ways. To have absorbed some of his 
 thought, and to have caught even a little of 
 his spirit and mental methods, was a growth 
 in intellectual stature. It was a high privi 
 lege that this institution, its faculty and 
 students as well as the community at large, 
 
 148 
 
THE MAN 
 
 had his services and great personality for 
 the final three years of his life, and in the 
 zenith of his mental ripeness and power. 
 His presence and labors have dedicated 
 anew this spot to scholarship, and to that 
 useful education in things and thoughts 
 which his own life so well symbolized. 
 
 As if to bless his final pilgrimage the 
 three years he spent here were among the 
 happiest and most peaceful of his life. Here 
 he was reminded of his young life in Eng 
 land when he first had a home of his own. 
 Here he found congenial companions and 
 people who, he said, had time to stop an3 
 think. His life here was free from turmoil 
 and he could do his best thinking. He found 
 joy in the scenery, the mountains, the flow 
 ers and the foliage especially of the pepper 
 boughs ; and the unstudied fields of geology 
 of the region offered him a hundred enticing 
 problems. 
 
 He had another experience here that gave 
 him tranquil comfort, one that in this pres 
 ence I hesitate to mention, but dare not 
 omit. It was his three years of association 
 with a faculty that, he many times privately 
 said, averaged superior to any other he had 
 known, in the completeness of its harmony, 
 magnanimity, and loyalty to high aims. 
 
 This utterance, that may be considered as 
 having come to us here as a final benedic- 
 
 149 
 
EDWARD WALLER CLAYPOLE 
 
 tion from his vanishing hand, wafts back 
 also his hope and prayer that such harmony 
 and loyalty and magnanimity may possess 
 all faculties of instruction everywhere, and 
 always. 
 
 150 
 
Address in Accepting a Bronze 
 Bust of Prof. Claypole 
 
Address in Accepting a Bronze 
 Bust of Prof. Claypole 
 
 The Throop College of Technology accepts 
 the custody of this bronze and will preserve 
 and guard it perpetually as a service to hu 
 man life and character, to the interests of 
 education, and to the honor of this com 
 munity. As we are mindful of the mean 
 ing and gift of this work of art, it will be 
 a constant monitor to us and to the friends 
 of truth and learning who come after us, 
 and especially to students and learners in 
 this part of the world. 
 
 We well know that it is only a few men 
 out of a million whose lives and qualities 
 justify their commemoration in this man 
 ner. We reproduce their form and features 
 on canvas, in plaster or marble, or in more 
 enduring bronze, as a testimonial of our ad 
 miration of them, and to the end that man 
 kind may be impressed with that vital mean 
 ing of their lives which we believe worthy 
 
 153 
 
ADDRESS IN ACCEPTING BRONZE 
 
 of perpetuation, and able to inspire and en 
 courage the endless procession of the race. 
 
 Fortunately this image of our dead friend 
 is of bronze and likely to endure after we 
 and a hundred generations of our successors 
 shall be forgotten, and after these walls shall 
 have returned to debris and dust. Men are 
 evanescent, most of the material things 
 we prize hurry into the mould of the ages 
 and become indistinguishable ; houses wear 
 out or burn, and walls even of granite 
 crumble and go down. But the bronze fig 
 ure of a man endures, is preserved through 
 the centuries, or may be dug out of the rub 
 bish of time or of some world s cataclysm, 
 to imbue mankind afresh with courage and 
 faith, and for historians to rewrite the story 
 of a human life that may hold a lesson as 
 enduring as the hills. 
 
 Some of those whom we single out for the 
 distinction of being thus preserved, are sol 
 diers and sailors who have fought for the 
 state or for some principle or doctrine. 
 Some are statesmen who by their powers 
 and prophecy have made the state their 
 debtor. Some have shown that unselfish 
 lives and kindness to others and gentleness 
 of spirit are most worth emulating. Some 
 are scholars and inventors who have opened 
 new paths and given new light to the world, 
 and so made life easier and happier. 
 
 154 
 
BUST OF PROF. CLAYPOLE 
 
 Professor Claypole had several qualities 
 that can never be emphasized too much. He 
 was a gentle soul, diffident and retiring, full 
 of the sweet spirit and charming courtesy of 
 the best of his time. His intellectual re 
 sources were so enormous that he was the 
 envy of every learner; and he disarmed all 
 jealousy of his endowments by his constant 
 efforts to bestow these gifts upon others 
 on whomsoever would come and take them. 
 They were his riches indeed, and he tried all 
 his life to give them away. Like grace and 
 goodness, the more he gave away the more 
 he had, and while he made others rich, he 
 was nothing poorer. His loyalty to the 
 truths of nature and the leadings of science 
 made him a model for all men. His heroism 
 under persecution for loyalty was more 
 commendable than even courage in battle. 
 Reared in England in the rigor of an older 
 civilization, fate tested and tried him in the 
 struggle for a newer thought, and then sent 
 him across the ocean to the farthest confines 
 of the regnant new nation, to help in the 
 creation of a better dispensation. His gen 
 tleness of spirit and methods of thinking and 
 teaching have entered into the lives of his 
 disciples, to be transmitted to others through 
 them. 
 
 The mission of this moment is twofold. 
 It is a gratification to the large body of 
 
 155 
 
ADDRESS IN ACCEPTING BRONZE 
 
 living students, scholars and friends 0f Pro 
 fessor Claypole, scattered over the world, 
 that he was so appreciated here, where his 
 last work was done, as to lead to such an . 
 honor as this being paid to his "memory. 
 But more than this must be its value to the 
 future classes of students who will be im-* 
 pressed with some of the facts of his life and 
 the meaning of the truths he stood for ; and 
 it will evoke a spirit of emulation, and art; 
 ambition variously wrought out to be . 
 dedicated to like living and thinking. 
 
 Whether it is a perfect likeness of his 
 form and features is a narrow question* for 
 our momentary discussion of today. We 
 know that the generations that look upon.it* 
 in the long future will agree that it is a fig 
 ure of great strength of character, and- of 
 power, and possessing a charm that will en 
 tice men to study it. Those who knew him 
 best and loved him most while he lived are 
 satisfied with the work of the artist, and we 
 are content to leave with the future the 
 question of whether the figure in bronze is 
 one worthy to have been made. 
 
 This gift has been made possible by the 
 material aid of one who has the modesty 
 of Professor Claypole himself.* Endowed in 
 a large way with the world s success, he still 
 has the same sort of unselfishness, and no 
 man appreciates more than he the value of 
 
 *The late Tod Ford, Sr. 
 
 156 
 
BUST OF PROF. CLAYPOLE 
 
 those qualities that are worth perpetuating 
 in bronze. Unable to have him here with 
 us now, and, by his gentle insistence for 
 bidden even to mention his name, we yet 
 know he is with us in the quiet ways of the 
 spirit, and is glad with us. 
 
 Thus ends an episode the end of whose 
 influence on the future nobody can tell. It 
 is a fortunate chain of events that has made 
 it possible. First the man; his life and 
 influence ; his manifold virtues worthy of 
 commemoration. Then the institution of 
 learning where he last displayed his mar 
 velous gifts, having the custody and guard 
 ing of the bronze. Next the generosity that 
 made this noble work of art possible. Fi 
 nally the far-spread host of friends glad of 
 its consummation. 
 
 Fortunate man to have died full of years, 
 after such a career and with a glory about 
 his head! Enviable friend of the dead and 
 the living to have found an opportunity that 
 means so much for both ! Fortunate halls 
 of study to be the depository of so signal a 
 treasure ; and fortunate most of all the learn 
 ers themselves who will here be inspired by 
 the face of this greatest of students, and 
 wh6se school memories and intellectual lives 
 will be richer and more noble by their part- 
 ownership in this record. 
 
 157 
 
Induction Address 
 
Induction Address 
 
 . Throop College of Technology* 
 
 Among the beautiful customs that have 
 come down to us from the past, few. are more 
 pleasing or valuable than the celebrations 
 with which we mark the epochs in our 
 lives. We enjoy- these events in anticipa 
 tion and in their realization, and we treas 
 ure the memory of them after they are over. 
 They have a certain ministry of education 
 for us, and they always help to commit us 
 anew to our better ideals. 
 
 Thus we celebrate the graduation of our 
 children and youths from schools and col 
 leges ; thus we emphasize their confirmation 
 in religion ; thus we solemnize their mar 
 riage ; so we mark their entry into a new 
 profession. In this way we dedicate churches 
 and institutions and men ; and all concerned 
 
 Address of the chairman of the Board of Trustees at 
 the public installation of the President, November 19, 1908, 
 Pasadena, CaJ. 
 
 161 
 
INDUCTION ADDRESS 
 
 feel more or less an inspiration, and are 
 given afresh to their saner ambitions. 
 
 The dedication of a progressive man of 
 power to be a college president marks an 
 epoch in the life of the college and in the 
 career of the man. Neither can ever be the 
 same afterwards. The college is likely to 
 take on some new shades of policy and to 
 feel some impulses of new life ; and the man 
 is usually tempered by the sense of a re 
 sponsibility that is as awful as battle and as 
 sacred as life. The installation becomes, 
 then, as it ought always to be, a consecra 
 tion. 
 
 We are gathered here tonight to bestow 
 such a dignity upon such a man. We are 
 to hear words of welcome, and of the duties 
 and rewards of this office, from the lips of 
 others whom Providence has called hereto 
 fore to like responsibilities. We are finally 
 to listen to his own interpretation of his 
 office, and of his hopes and ambitions for 
 this institution and for this people. We are 
 here to honor him and the college alike, 
 and, let us hope, to be ourselves dedicated 
 to some part in the work of both. 
 
 After greetings from the University of Southern 
 California through Dr. Healy; Pomona College 
 through President Gates ; Occidental College through 
 President Baer; Whittier College through Presi 
 dent Newlin, and the Carnegie Institution 
 
 162 
 
INDUCTION ADDRESS 
 
 through Dr. George E. Hale, Dr. Bridge further 
 said: 
 
 Dr. Scherer: In formally investing you 
 with the office of President of Throop Col 
 lege we do not offer you a key, real or meta- 
 phoric, of a building. We present to you 
 rather a commission to a charge of singular 
 usefulness and of vast responsibility. 
 
 It is a momentous thing in the life of a 
 man to find his true work, and it is a tragedy 
 when he misses it. It is equally momentous 
 that great human interests and forces find a 
 fit captain as it is a sinful w aste when they 
 fail of it. This hour, it seems to us, has 
 brought the man and the work together. 
 
 Your apparent preparation for this duty 
 has been a continuous process since your 
 childhood in a profounder sense the be 
 ginning of your preparation dates far back 
 of your grandparents. Study of many sorts 
 in many lands, varied uplifting activities, 
 and triumphs over obstacles, have ripened 
 your mind and character for this labor. 
 While still young it is your privilege to enter 
 upon what promises to be your final work 
 and the consummation of your career. 
 
 You have been called hither with in 
 genuous unanimity, and your election is sine 
 die. If your success as president is to be 
 measured by the genuineness of your wel- 
 
 163 
 
INDUCTION ADDRESS 
 
 come and by our faith in you, it will be phe 
 nomenal indeed. 
 
 Forty years ago, the dean and Nestor of 
 American college presidents himself a 
 model for all scholars and all men was in 
 stalled in Harvard college. Now, covered 
 with glory and honor, and while yet vigor 
 ous, he returns his commission to the 
 authority that gave it. He has lived to see 
 under his leadership a revolution in peda 
 gogy and in the curricula of study in schools 
 and colleges, and the vindication of the 
 axiom that, in matters of education, com 
 mon sense and the demands of this age are 
 as sacred as tradition. He has made us un 
 derstand that the human world moves ; and 
 every student in all this land has become 
 his debtor. May your experience here be as 
 fortunate. May your hand be as steady and 
 your poise as imperturbable as his have 
 been. And may you creditably administer 
 the office you now assume, becoming and re 
 maining the foremost private citizen of this 
 community, till far toward the midday of 
 this twentieth century. 
 
 Our academic friends and neighbors have 
 honored us by coming here tonight; and 
 they have brought for you their gifts of wel 
 come and counsel. We have welcomed you 
 to our hearts already, and we now offer you 
 some gifts that we would fain hope may 
 
 164 
 
INDUCTION ADDRESS 
 
 cheer your spirit and make your, burden 
 lighter. We give you first the frank good 
 will of the people of this incomparable com 
 munity. I am sure they are anxious to help 
 you in any way they can. Some can do lit 
 tle, others much ; but all can help somewhat 
 and somewhere. Many of them are ignor 
 ant of the fact that a college of your kind is 
 the greatest moral and civic asset that dis 
 tinguishes such a community as this from 
 others less fortunate, and they are waiting 
 for you to discover to them their opportuni 
 ties. 
 
 We bring you the gift of loving labor 
 the most wholesome, joyous and unselfish. 
 We cannot hope that you will always find 
 your task easy we trust and believe you 
 will have strength for your task; and no 
 finer work awaits the hand of man this side 
 of the stars. 
 
 We give you the single-minded loyalty 
 and mutualness in service of your govern 
 ing board. They may not always agree with 
 you ; and they may sometimes try to con 
 vince you that they know as much about an 
 institution of learning as you do, but most 
 of them in their hearts will know better; 
 and if they cannot convince you, they will 
 be glad to be converted at your hands. 
 
 We present you an ample, virgin college 
 campus, with stately trees and a grand view 
 
 165 
 
INDUCTION ADDRESS 
 
 of the mountains; with all the smiles of 
 nature upon it, and pictures of magnificence 
 for the future. Nor do we try to disguise 
 the significant interrogation mark beneath 
 these pictures. 
 
 We give you a talisman of power, which 
 is the ability, after you have sought what 
 aid and encouragement you may, and plan 
 ned as carefully as you can for every issue 
 and responsibility, to bear your ultimate 
 burdens philosophically and alone. 
 
 Finally we bring you two gifts which are 
 the talismans of youth, and the joint anti 
 dote to the fossilization of age. One is the 
 ambition to be the means of such original 
 work as shall add to the knowledge of the 
 world and to the equipment of mankind. 
 The other is a radiant vision of an unend 
 ing procession of children and youths ex 
 uberant with energy and power on the way 
 to school in the morning. The children pass 
 into youths and the youths into maturity 
 and out of the column, but while they are 
 there they are for you to inspire and guide. 
 As you incline your ear to the music of these 
 charms, your life shall be transfigured with 
 gladness, and although years may wrinkle 
 your face and whiten your hair you shall 
 never grow old. 
 
 And now, by the authority of the Board 
 of Trustees, your work-fellows in service 
 
 166 
 
INDUCTION ADDRESS 
 
 more than your legal superiors, and with the 
 assistance of this concourse of neighbors 
 and friends who are graciously here as wit 
 nesses, you are declared to be the confirmed 
 and very president of Throop College. 
 
 167 
 
Charles Dwight Willard 
 
Charles Dwight Willard* 
 An Appreciation 
 
 An intellectual life is always a mysterious 
 and precious thing in our human world. If 
 such a life is endowed with industry, 
 honesty of purpose and a sense of propor 
 tion it has an added value. If it has also 
 modesty as to its own merits and attain 
 ments, and a sense of humor for the tan 
 gents of others, it is by such token a gentle 
 life and is doubly precious as a conserving 
 force for itself and others ; and if to all these 
 gifts is added, as a dominant emotion, a 
 fixed purpose to try to better the lives of 
 those about it then that life is as choice 
 as it is rare. Whether, in the casual calcu 
 lation of the street, the success of such a life 
 is much or little, it tinges the intellectual 
 currents about it; it touches with its own 
 qualities many thoughtful other lives, who 
 in turn transmit these to still others, in 
 
 *Mr. Willard died January 22, 1914. 
 
 171 
 
CHARLES DWIGHT WILLARD 
 
 whose minds they may come to acquire the 
 force of fixed traits. 
 
 The passing of such a life is a solemn 
 event, for it reveals the log of its voyage 
 and the balance-sheet of its values, and 
 the showing is sure to be both creditable 
 and honorable. 
 
 Such a life was that of Charles Dwight 
 Willard "Charlie" Willard always to those 
 who knew him best and we are proud of 
 its record. His was a gentle soul. Intel 
 lectual to a high degree, gifted with a sur 
 passing flavor of personality, industrious 
 under a cruel handicap for many years, and 
 with a courage that was sublime, he accom 
 plished a great amount of telling work 
 where another would have given up in 
 despair. 
 
 He was mentally fitted for a literary 
 career, and could through it have attained 
 wide fame had he been able to pursue it 
 continuously. But the needs of his house 
 hold compelled him to give most of his time 
 and effort to work more directly remunera 
 tive than literature. To such he gave him 
 self freely, and so he came to make an 
 enviable record in several pursuits: in jour 
 nalism years ago; in the Chamber of Com 
 merce, which is the guardian and helper of 
 the laudable interests of the community; in 
 the Jobbers Association for the interest of 
 
 172 
 
CHARLES DWIGHT WILLARD 
 
 Los Angeles as a business metropolis, and 
 in the Municipal League, which is com 
 mitted to correct and economical govern 
 ment a paramount need in a city of such 
 phenomenal growth as that of Los Angeles. 
 Finally, he came back to journalism as an 
 editorial writer of great acceptability and 
 power. 
 
 In these public and quasi-public activities, 
 in pursuit of what he felt to be his line of 
 duty, he often had to give and take severe 
 criticism. That which he received he took 
 with such smiling grace as would have been 
 impossible to a man of less philosophy. In 
 that he gave he never raised his voice or 
 used undignified language but nobody was 
 ever left in any doubt as to his meaning. 
 And many of those who at times sharply 
 differed from him respected his attitude, 
 admired his force and ingenuity, and loved 
 him always. 
 
 In his conversation and in his writings he 
 was the educated gentleman without a 
 shadow of cant or pedantry, and his literary 
 style in journalistic and other writing was 
 charming and effective, because it was free 
 from stilted and fixed forms, and it was 
 garnished with humor, with satire and with 
 surprises never too much, always just 
 enough to give charm and force, and with 
 out ever giving a sense of excess. 
 
 173 
 
CHARLES DWIGHT WILLARD 
 
 His story of "The Fall of Ulysses" is a 
 classic in style and a masterpiece in gentle 
 satire. It shows what magnificent work he 
 was capable of, and what he might have 
 accomplished could he have pursued freely 
 that line of effort. He wrote several other 
 short stories, which, let us hope, will now 
 be gathered together and published in per 
 manent form. He wrote several histories, 
 one of the "City of Los Angeles," one of 
 "The Free Harbor Contest" in which he 
 bore a creditable part; one of the "Los An 
 geles Chamber of Commerce," which he had 
 helped to build up into a power in the com 
 munity. He wrote a successful text book on 
 "City Government for Young People," 
 which by his work in the Municipal League 
 and his broad study of the subject, he was 
 well fitted to do. In all his literary work, 
 as in all his work, he showed himself the 
 careful and conscientious scholar, and a 
 good critic of his own performances. In 
 1895 he took the initiative in forming the 
 Sunset Club of Los Angeles. His purpose 
 was to bring together once a month, 
 throughout most of the year, a company of 
 congenial souls drawn from various fields 
 of occupation and activity, to eat a dinner 
 together and discuss some subject of human 
 interest. He modestly insisted that Judge 
 Enoch Knight, of blessed memory, should be 
 
 174 
 
CHARLES DWIGHT WILLARD 
 
 its first president. He himself was afterward 
 president, and his spirit and genius were 
 always an influence in the life of the club. 
 Its members have now an opportunity to 
 evidence their continuing respect for his 
 memory by extending their regard to his 
 devoted wife and daughter ; and they will 
 not neglect the privilege. 
 
 Charlie s good fellowship and his enjoy 
 ment of his friends were permanent char 
 acteristics ; and he had a power of attach 
 ing friends to him in a remarkable degree. 
 For this there is only one possible explana 
 tion namely, his charm of personality and 
 a great measure of that quality we call 
 character. 
 
 He was a man of wide and discriminating 
 reading and enormous information, and his 
 conversation was always full of surprises 
 and enjoyment to others. His face, like that 
 of his wonderful mother, was always serious 
 when at rest, but no one w r ho knew him w r ill 
 ever forget the luminous revelation of his 
 laughter. It was doubly interesting because 
 it was never for effect, but always the token 
 of something worth laughter. 
 
 On partial recovery from a desperate 
 sickness in Chicago in 1885, his physicians 
 insisted that he should go to California in 
 the hope of prolonging his life. He pro 
 tested, but finally went obediently. When 
 
 175 
 
CHARLES DWIGHT WILLARD 
 
 a few years afterward he welcomed here 
 one of those physicians, who had himself 
 been expatriated for a similar reason, he 
 laughed explosively that his friend had been 
 obliged to take his own medicine. 
 
 Born of characterful and scholarly par 
 ents into a family of numerous children, he 
 had a childhood and youth that were un- 
 pampered, and full of duties. The family 
 was one of mentally brilliant parents and 
 children all of them. He had the bent of 
 the scholar, which he was to his dying day, 
 and a university course emphasized the 
 good start he inherited and received at 
 home, in logical and systematic thinking. 
 
 He started out in a life work with the 
 best of prospects, but in two years he was 
 hit by an infecting blight that for weeks 
 threatened to be speedily mortal. The acute 
 passed into a chronic ailment that he 
 struggled against for more than half of his 
 lifetime. It changed his career; it trans 
 formed his life, and it transfigured his soul. 
 Thereafter he lived the life of a soldier liable 
 to go under fire at any moment. His fight 
 against his infirmity was made with a cour 
 age undaunted by pain, and undisturbed by 
 a thought of surrender. He faced his mis 
 fortunes with that sort of manhood that be 
 longs to the saints, and that has been the 
 hope of all the ages. His mental grasp grew 
 
 176 
 
CHARLES DWIGHT WILLARD 
 
 more comprehensive and his philosophy 
 more clear as time went on. Unembittered 
 by the misfortunes of the past, he kept his 
 face toward the light and the future, and 
 went on with his work as he could he went 
 on with it as few men could do, and as 
 few ever have done. 
 
 Until a few weeks ago he continued to 
 write incisive articles with the evidence of 
 a normal and superior mind, while his 
 friends saw plainly that the angel of death 
 was hovering near. But he had seen the 
 dark shadow often before it was familiar 
 to him, and he was little disturbed, except 
 from pain. So, when the angel came to 
 him in his sleep at about the hour when he 
 had finished his fifty-four years of earthly 
 life, and touched him tenderly, and told him 
 that he was a hero and had worked long 
 enough, and that he had earned the right 
 to his freedom, it was a blessed message, 
 and he went gladly. And those who loved 
 him will hallow his memory, and be better 
 for it, but they will not begrudge him his 
 release. 
 
 177 
 
The Southwest Museum 
 
The Southwest Museum* 
 
 We are assembled here today to celebrate 
 the beginning of a notable building; one that 
 is made of the most enduring material, and 
 built by the ultimate word of engineering 
 science. The structure itself and the ground 
 on which it stands are the gifts of our citi 
 zens to the community as a whole, for a 
 great and altogether worthy public purpose. 
 For convenience and continuity of adminis 
 tration, the property is held and managed by 
 a corporation created for the purpose, and 
 known as "The Southwest Museum." 
 
 We are about to place in one of the walls 
 of this building a memorial stone wrought 
 out of the hardest granite, duly inscribed 
 with this year of our Lord and with the seal 
 and motto of the corporation. It has a cav 
 ern chiseled out of its center for the rest 
 ing place of a metal box, in which will be 
 placed numerous documents and things illus- 
 
 * Address at the Memorial- Stone Laying, December 6. 
 1913, Museum Hill, Los Angeles. 
 
 181 
 
THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM 
 
 trative of our time and efforts, of our sociol 
 ogy and our place in history. These will be 
 sealed against the ravages of time ; and we 
 hope they may not need to see the light 
 again until the box shall be opened, per 
 haps with surprise, by our successors in 
 some far-off century. 
 
 From immemorial time the ceremonial of 
 laying the corner-stone (or memorial-stone) 
 of buildings for public use has been com 
 monly observed. More than this, the idea 
 of the corner-stone has, through probably at 
 least twenty-five centuries, in the minds of 
 thinking people, typified the qualities of dig 
 nity, stability and worth. 
 
 Longfellow called Plymouth Rock "the 
 corner-stone of a Nation." James Freeman 
 Clark said that "the educated, trained, en 
 lightened conscience is the corner-stone of 
 Society." Shakespeare made one of his 
 characters in Cariolanus refer to the corner 
 stone of a building as the highest expression 
 of immovableness. "See you yond coign o* 
 the Capitol, yond corner-stone?" "If it be 
 possible for you to displace it with your 
 little finger, there is some hope that the 
 ladies of Rome, especially his Mother, may 
 prevail with him." St. Paul said to the 
 Ephesians : "Ye are built upon the founda 
 tions of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus 
 Christ being the Chief Corner-Stone." And 
 
 182 
 
THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM 
 
 in that poem or allegory, the Book of Job, 
 the Lord says to the man, regarding the 
 foundations of the earth : "Whereupon are 
 the foundations thereof fastened ; or, who 
 laid the corner-stone thereof?" 
 
 The laying of a corner-stone is not only 
 a pleasant ceremonial, to be remembered as 
 such, but it is in the nature of a consecra 
 tion ; it commits everyone connected with 
 the institution to the completion and final 
 dedication of the structure to the purposes 
 of its creation. From today this pile ceases 
 to be merely rock, lime, cement and iron. 
 It becomes alive, and clothed as with a con 
 sciousness of its purpose, and determined to 
 fulfill the destiny that is here promised. 
 
 No community in the pioneer days of its 
 life builds monuments or museums, or 
 founds historical societies, for it has nothing 
 to commemorate by monuments, and no his 
 tory during such time it is unconsciously 
 making history. When the struggle for ex 
 istence is sharp upon us, we have no time 
 or interest for museums, and we may ignore 
 the most valuable specimens, or even crush 
 them under our feet. For such institutions 
 as this it requires that a people shall be old 
 enough to have a perspective of history, 
 and shall have become prosperous enough 
 to be able to stop and take account of its 
 more permanent treasures. 
 
 183 
 
THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM 
 
 And this community has reached and 
 passed that stage of its life. This is not a 
 new country of this continent, as is usually 
 supposed. It has found itself, it has a his 
 tory, and has come to its monument-build 
 ing time. Our great Southwest country wit 
 nessed the beginning of civilization long 
 before it had a foothold on our Atlantic sea 
 board. We boast of the antiquity of Ply 
 mouth Rock, and that some of our own an 
 cestors settled in New England early in the 
 17th century, but long before that time the 
 Spanish Padres were in this western coun 
 try, bringing civilization as well as the 
 church to the aborigines. The onrush of 
 our later English-speaking growth has so 
 submerged the earlier Castilian speech that 
 it is nearly forgotten, and we have even felt 
 it necessary to chisel on this memorial- 
 stone a translation of our Spanish motto: 
 "Mariana flor de sus ayeres" "Tomorrow 
 shall be the flower of all its yesterdays." 
 
 Some of the heritage of those early be 
 ginnings is ours, and it is our ambition to 
 here preserve to the uttermost the records 
 of them and of the aboriginal life back of 
 them. In this noble building, proof against 
 weather, time, fire and the temblors of the 
 earth, they shall be kept permanently, and 
 for the study and use of all who will come 
 and profit by them. 
 
 184 
 
THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM 
 
 We cannot build monuments like the 
 Egyptians of old ; Karnak and the Pyramids 
 evidence a time when a few men were the 
 merciless taskmasters of the unwilling mul 
 titude. No such bondage as that is for us 
 in the building of our monuments, and we 
 would not have it if we could. We can 
 build, and we are here building, a structure 
 capable of defying the centuries, and not for 
 the vanity of kings, but for the learning and 
 pleasure of everybody who will come. 
 
 The archives of man s life and progress 
 upon the earth are a sacred thing. We make 
 it an offense against the law to disturb a 
 surveyor s stake or a boundary monument 
 of any sort. The evidences of the march of 
 mankind and the changes of human social 
 life are more valuable, if not more neces 
 sary, and civilization has had a sad time in 
 preserving its records during some of its 
 centuries. But for the Fathers of the early 
 Christian Church there would today be a 
 vast gap in the story of it. We can never 
 thank the Church enough for preserving 
 those early archives, as we cannot be suf 
 ficiently grateful to the same Church in this 
 later day for a large collection illustrating 
 the early history of this western land. We 
 are determined that our most acceptable 
 thanks shall be the careful preservation of 
 all of these records. 
 
 185 
 
THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM 
 
 This Museum will house such specimens, 
 manuscripts, books, pictures and other 
 things as may, in the judgment of the man 
 agement, be of permanent value. Among 
 those things that will be guarded as most 
 precious are all documents and things that 
 illustrate the life of man in this country, 
 especially of the southwest part of it, both 
 before and after the beginning of recorded 
 history. These will be gathered with all 
 the industry we can command, and will be 
 hoarded with jealous care. 
 
 Our ambition is that the wealth of this 
 collection shall be used for the enlighten 
 ment and education of this people. Every 
 encouragement will be given to students of 
 any subject who can make the collection 
 useful without injury to it or dissipating its 
 parts. We trust that the Museum will fur 
 nish in time to come many great object 
 lessons, and be one of the fields of objective 
 instruction in the regular work of some of 
 the schools of this city, and of all the col 
 leges and universities in the Southwest. 
 There are six such institutions of higher 
 learning in this neighborhood now, each 
 having something of a museum of its own. 
 We place this collection at their service and 
 urge its use in regular pilgrimages to its 
 halls by faculties and students. We will 
 assist the colleges by exchanges and other- 
 
 186 
 
THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM 
 
 wise in enriching their own collections, as 
 we will applaud all their successes of what 
 ever sort, like the true allies in their work 
 that we intend to be. 
 
 We hope not only to have some additions 
 to our present building, but to have an out 
 door amphitheatre where we can have 
 classes from the schools and the public to 
 receive instruction illustrated by specimens 
 from the Museum in the various lines in 
 which the collection is rich. And the 
 Museum is ready to illustrate numerous les 
 sons in half a dozen different sciences. 
 
 During the last four years more than 
 8,000 teachers and students have received 
 illustrated instruction, mostly at the hands 
 of our wise and unselfish curator, Hector 
 Alliot. This teaching has been largely 
 given in the various branches of archae 
 ology ; but we expect that in the future such 
 educational work will extend to botany, 
 conchology, ornithology, mineralogy, an 
 thropology and perhaps zoology. 
 
 There is almost no limit to the benefit the 
 Museum can render the public in the way 
 indicated. We have no sympathy with the 
 idea that a museum should be a storehouse 
 apart from the living interests of the public. 
 We hope to make this a storehouse by pre 
 serving carefully all its treasures. But we 
 are equally anxious to bring the knowledge 
 
 187 
 
THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM 
 
 which the Museum embodies to the people, 
 and we shall resort to every and any meas 
 ure within wisdom and reason to bring this 
 about. 
 
 The Southwest, contrary to the casual 
 estimate of many of our people, is rich in 
 archaeological material. We of this me 
 tropolis ought to have begun long ago in a 
 substantial way to gather and preserve this 
 vast historic wealth. As a matter of fact, 
 thousands of our specimens have, during our 
 years of inactivity, gone to the East and to 
 Europe to enrich their already enormous 
 collections ; but we believe that enough ma 
 terial is left that we can secure above 
 ground, and by delving into the earth, to 
 fill several buildings of the size of this one. 
 We have a collection now in hand that, in 
 cluding books and documents, must number 
 at least 122,000 articles; and it will require 
 probably more than one-half of the present 
 building to house this material properly. 
 Several valuable collections now in private 
 hands are promised us as soon as we occupy 
 these new quarters; and we expect that be 
 fore many years we shall be asking our citi 
 zens for funds with which to build succes 
 sive additions to this structure. 
 
 This building is constructed of the best 
 concrete, reinforced in the most efficient 
 way. Its foundations were carried far down 
 
 188 
 
THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM 
 
 into the earth to make sure of stability. 
 Tons of steel enter into the construction, 
 including the roof, which is to be of steel 
 hidden by concrete, and its covering is to 
 be of tile. Only the cases and a few other 
 parts will be of combustible material, so 
 that the collection will be safe from fire. 
 The location of the structure on a large tract 
 of land protects it from any harm from its 
 neighbors, and its elevation above the street 
 adds to its safety. 
 
 The present building is only a part of the 
 plan of the ultimate structure which we 
 hope will some day be built here, the part 
 now under way being the front of the pile, 
 the later parts to be extensions back from 
 the ends of this one, with the outdoor am 
 phitheatre between. 
 
 The present magnificent central pavilion, 
 guarded by two imposing towers, will make 
 a symmetrical whole, with an appearance of 
 completeness. Our friends have approved 
 of the pictures of it they will admire the 
 finished product. 
 
 The central pavilion will bear the name 
 of the noble woman who bequeathed fifty 
 thousand dollars for this purpose, and to 
 whom be all honor for her generous im 
 pulses and for the wise conditions of her 
 gift. This part of the building will be called 
 "The Carrie M. Jones Memorial Halls." 
 
 189 
 
 
THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM 
 
 The smaller tower at the southwest end 
 of the main pavilion will bear the name of 
 the donor of it a citizen who is as unosten 
 tatious as he is generous and able, and who 
 always prefers that his gifts shall go unher 
 alded. Until now he has forbidden us to 
 mention his name in this connection ; but 
 at last he has, at our urgent request, with 
 drawn the injunction. His name is Jared 
 S. Torrance, and the tower will be known as 
 "The Torrance Tower." 
 
 The large tower at the other end of the 
 building will be so grand a pile that the 
 suggestion seemed natural to borrow a name 
 from the Yosemite Valley, and call it "El 
 Capitan." But it has been determined to 
 give it a more usable name, and one has 
 been chosen that is suggested by the cara 
 cole in its center a spiral, auger-shaped 
 stairway, said to be unique in America in 
 buildings of this sort. It will be called "The 
 Caracole Tower." 
 
 That this building might never be lost 
 among, or be overshadowed by, surround 
 ing structures, and for sundry other rea 
 sons, it is purposely placed on a hill. So it 
 is in view of all the people, and it is not 
 reached too easily. The moving multitude 
 will see it, and all who are capable will ad 
 mire its expansive proportions and its rug 
 ged and fitting architecture. Out of the in- 
 
 190 
 
THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM 
 
 quisitiveness of our American race, many 
 will come to know its purpose and mis 
 sion, and will tell their neighbors about it. 
 
 A few people have objected to the hill- 
 climbing necessary to reach this spot, and 
 fancy that this circumstance may impair the 
 usefulness of the institution ; but they for 
 get some facts of their own experience. No 
 student in search of knowledge, or even 
 amusement, will be daunted by this hill, or 
 by one much higher. Students of all ages 
 have known that for knowledge they must 
 search hard, dig deep and climb high; and 
 they never stop. People with even curios 
 ity do not stop at a trifle of a hill ; they climb 
 mountains, monuments and campaniles, and 
 go on long hiking trips with joy and bene 
 fit. When they climb this hill, if they will 
 only come on their own feet and not by an 
 automobile, they shall add to the compensa 
 tion of knowledge the thrill of the exercise, 
 and have besides a more compensating view 
 of magnificent mountains, and of an evolv 
 ing metropolis of half a million people. 
 Moreover, the hill will give the Museum to 
 know who its real friends and beneficiaries 
 are ; but the Corporation will not reject the 
 gift of a flight of easy steps, or an automatic 
 elevator, from any friend who cares to offer. 
 
 This hill site of 16 acres, costing some 
 thing over $30,000, is a gift to the Corpora- 
 
 191 
 
THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM 
 
 tion by about fifty donors. This building 
 with its furniture and appurtenances, which 
 will cost much over $100,000, will be the 
 gift of fewer than one hundred donors.* 
 These figures indicate a restricted interest 
 in this work, and it may be asked whether 
 any public work that enlists the sympathy 
 of so few people can be of vital consequence 
 to the people as a whole. But it must be 
 remembered that all public movements of 
 a voluntary character are started by a few 
 people; helping friends come later. This is 
 the history of all agitations for better health 
 and more safety for the people, for better 
 education, more enjoyment, greater ad 
 vantages and better outlook for us all. This 
 is the history of such movements in behalf 
 of schools, colleges, eleemosynary institu 
 tions, art galleries, museums and many 
 other helpful and ennobling forces, without 
 which we should today be poor indeed. 
 
 The busy throng have had to be con 
 vinced of the value and need of such move 
 ments before many of those who could help 
 have been moved to consider their personal 
 duty to the present and future. The casual 
 man of the street thinks little about these 
 things; but the growth in consequence of 
 any community is measured exactly by the 
 
 *This does not include the large number of donors to 
 the collection members of the Southwest Society and others. 
 
 192 
 
THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM 
 
 proportion of such men, who, early or late 
 in their lives, discover some ideals that have 
 previously lain dormant in their souls; who 
 remember that some day they must leave 
 their worldly goods behind them, that the 
 newer generations will live after them ; and 
 who come to know in an abiding way that 
 no man worthy of the name really lives 
 wholly "unto himself." 
 
 This corporation of the Southwest Mu 
 seum is the offspring of the "Southwest 
 Society of the Archaeological Institute," of 
 some four hundred members. These mem 
 bers have watched the growth of the Mu 
 seum with deep interest. Now that their 
 child has attained to the dignity of a larger 
 public notice and the opportunity of wider 
 usefulness, with a proper building in which 
 to house its ingatherings, there is added 
 reason for the members to understand that 
 the Museum is still their responsibility for 
 such aid and counsel as they can give it. 
 The work will profit by any material 
 strength they can give, by assisting in find 
 ing, tracing out and securing material, and 
 not least by forming a body of wise public 
 opinion for advice, admonition and encour 
 agement. We trust that all the members 
 will visit this hill often enough to keep in 
 touch with our doings; and we promise 
 them that we are their servants, and 
 
 193 
 
THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM 
 
 learners from all people who will bring us a 
 wiser thought than we have, or who will 
 show us how we can, within our abilities, 
 serve the public better. 
 
 No broad enlightenment or wide vision 
 conies to any community that is out of its 
 swaddling clothes of time and growth, if 
 it neglects its schools and colleges, its 
 means of personal welfare, or if it ignores its 
 own history as expressed in its monuments, 
 learned societies and museums. 
 
 This community has gone far in material 
 growth, in amassing wealth, and in creating 
 beauty. It is spending its money freely in 
 various creditable ways. 
 
 Every year reveals additions to that con 
 siderable body of our citizens, both men 
 and women, who conceive that possessions 
 mean responsibility and a duty to others, 
 which can be discharged only by giving 
 some of their surplus and with it giving 
 themselves to those things that glorify the 
 city, enhance its ideals, ennoble its citizen 
 ship, and stamp it as being in the forefront 
 of western enlightenment. 
 
 The monument that is rising on this hill 
 testifies to that spirit; and in its imposing 
 harmony, as well as in its expanding career, 
 it will realize these purposes. From the 
 exhibits within its walls, in the years to 
 come, an unending succession of youths 
 
 194 
 
THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM 
 
 shall acquire knowledge and new ambitions 
 for self-development and finer ideals; they 
 shall thereby have better views of life and 
 duty, and the joy that comes of wider use 
 fulness. 
 
 195 
 
Vermont 
 
Vermont* 
 
 It is a pleasure to acknowledge the del 
 icate compliment of your call to stand in 
 this place at this time. The honor is sin 
 cerely appreciated, and not less so because 
 it came as a genuine surprise. And I shall 
 hope to avoid any regrets on your part by 
 refraining from a long speech. This is a 
 time both of good cheer and mercy. It 
 would be unfair to you, to deliver a lengthy 
 address, or even to read a lecture on the 
 history of Vermont, interesting as that sub 
 ject is. 
 
 This association is to be congratulated on 
 this goodly gathering of good people to mix 
 an evening of enjoyment with a revival of 
 memories of the hills and brooks, and to 
 pay a tender tribute to an honored old state. 
 The association is to be felicitated, too, on 
 its own vigor after these dozen years, and 
 the growth rather than the waning of the 
 
 *Presidential Address, at the annual banquet of the 
 Illinois Association of the Sons of Vermont, January 17, 
 1889. 
 
 199 
 
VERMONT 
 
 warm emotions we have for Vermont and 
 her memories. 
 
 This occasion means much more than an 
 hour of enjoyment, and because it is one 
 of a long series of annual gatherings of the 
 kind there must be something in Vermont 
 as an idea. 
 
 Vermonters are peculiar in having an 
 abiding attachment for their native state 
 and her history. Some people laugh at this 
 sentiment, some even doubt its existence, 
 and some call it unpatriotic; while most 
 who are outside the circle, and who try, 
 wholly fail either to understand or account 
 for it. Some say its existence is due to the 
 fact that Vermont is so inhospitable and 
 barren, and that, in proportion as a people 
 ought to leave a birthplace on a poor soil 
 for richer soil and better homes, are they 
 always reluctant to do so, and look back 
 with regret after they have moved. Some 
 attribute the sentiment to what they term 
 the inborn conceit of the native Vermonter, 
 and others to his ignorance. We are told 
 again the old story that somewhere in Ver 
 mont the sheep were fenced away from the 
 rocks to prevent them from starving, and 
 we often have quoted at us, and we some 
 times quote, the saying attributed first to 
 Senator Douglas, that "it is a good state to 
 be born in and to emigrate from." 
 
 200 
 
VERMONT 
 
 It must be acknowledged that this feeling 
 has been shared by many of us. Scattered 
 through the West are many men who look 
 back to the toil of their early years among 
 the rocks with a sense of comfort that for 
 tune has carried them to more congenial if 
 not to easier paths. Yet the sentiment of 
 veneration and attachment for Vermont 
 remains among the best of her wandering 
 sons and daughters as a most interesting 
 example of its kind. Nor is its genesis re 
 markable or hidden. Love of country, like 
 many another noble sentiment, grows from 
 hard seed ; it is not the outcome of mere 
 pleasure, but of such severe experiences as 
 make deep, and therefore lasting impres 
 sions upon men. Long years of life together 
 with like aims and interests, with a fra 
 ternal, neighbor feeling, in toil and priva 
 tion, in struggles and contests; with love 
 for a common cause and hatred for a com 
 mon enemy and moved in both by a 
 chivalric manhood these experiences weld 
 a people together in a love of country and 
 home and the very name and picture of 
 them that lasts as long as the people last, 
 scattered though they be, and that lives in 
 song and story after the race is extinct. 
 
 Vermont has furnished all these elements 
 in abundance. Contests and troubles began 
 in her territory before it was inhabited, 
 
 201 
 
VERMONT 
 
 when the Indians and the unfriendly French 
 in Canada made any but the bravest fear to 
 settle there. After the British took Canada, 
 Vermont was more rapidly occupied by a 
 sturdy and venturesome people, who were 
 poor, and not afraid of work. 
 
 This people learned a respect for their 
 hills and for each other by the trials that 
 followed. For then began a warfare that 
 waxed with wide fluctuations, and in forms 
 numerous, for more than a quarter of a cen 
 tury. 
 
 In that warfare they protested and 
 argued; they fought, both to terrify and to 
 kill, and both in armies and individually; 
 and they defended the law generally, but 
 sometimes took it into their own hands. 
 
 For thirty years Vermont was an inde 
 pendent country. After she had been inde 
 pendent for half a generation she declared 
 formally in 1777 that she was inde 
 pendent of everybody, and intended to 
 remain so. She had no more partnership 
 with the colonies or with the United States 
 than Mexico has now. She was isolated 
 from the colonies about her ; more than that, 
 she was at odds with them all. She re 
 sisted New York in a persistent attempt 
 at what she regarded as land robbery; 
 and she defied New Hampshire and Mas 
 sachusetts in their similar, if less mon- 
 
 202 
 
VERMONT 
 
 strous, efforts. Early in the war of the 
 Revolution she fought hard against the 
 British, as the battles of Ticonderoga and 
 Bennington attest, and afterward when her 
 armies were confronted with overpowering 
 numbers, she accomplished by diplomacy 
 what she could not by force, namely, a truce, 
 which lasted nearly two years, and till the 
 war of the Revolution was over. But this 
 did not prevent her sons individually from 
 remaining in the armies of the Revolution. 
 
 Afterward she maintained her defiance of 
 neighboring states on the ante-revolution 
 ary issues of land robbery and self-govern 
 ment. She made her own laws and executed 
 them, and was a law unto herself, until she 
 was finally admitted to the union in 1791. 
 She was the only part of the country that 
 fought Great Britain which the latter never 
 acknowledged to be independent. 
 
 It was in my native town of Windsor that 
 in 1777 a new constitution was adopted, 
 creating the name of Vermont and for 
 bidding slavery within her territory ; no 
 other state had at that time abolished 
 slavery. 
 
 Vermont could have remained out of the 
 union indefinitely had she so minded, but 
 she was anxious to be a part of that govern 
 ment which even then gave promise of what 
 it has become, the marvel of history. Since 
 
 203 
 
VERMONT 
 
 the time when moved by the true national 
 spirit she renounced her independence and 
 passed into the union of states, her history 
 flows into the noble stream that belongs to 
 the whole country. Her marked and dis 
 tinctive individuality, and what may be 
 termed her exclusive sentiment-inspiring 
 age, ceased with that event. The old spirit 
 and strength of the people continued, and 
 let us hope, have descended in some part 
 to their children, but the sentiment has 
 changed as that epoch has receded into the 
 past. The moving years have softened its 
 fervor, as they have given it the glamour 
 of age, and touched its source with the en 
 chantment of distance. 
 
 To us a thousand miles away the moun 
 tains of changing colors and the life of long 
 ago, are at once a memory and an inspira 
 tion. Amid scenes so utterly changed we 
 sometimes fancy we have outgrown the 
 Vermont of our youth. In some things 
 probably we have. We may be less pro 
 vincial, more cosmopolitan and broader. I 
 greatly fear we have not always grown in 
 goodness as much as we have in the arts and 
 ways of the world. 
 
 Many of us who came from the depths 
 of the hills, can never, as we would never, 
 grow away from the memory of the simple, 
 frugal home life of that time, or of its many 
 
 204 
 
VERMONT 
 
 child pleasures perhaps nowhere else ever 
 matched. These rush upon our recollection 
 in a tumult. Jostling each other for the 
 foreground are the old cider mill and the 
 expert manipulation of a straw, the apple 
 parings, the running sap and the sugaring- 
 off, the half mile rush on some Nature s 
 toboggan, the butternut crackings, the 
 spruce gum, and a hundred other memories 
 of delight. 
 
 When we recall those scenes, and our 
 playmates and what has become of most of 
 them ; our fathers who protected us and 
 taught and enticed us to work ; but most of 
 all when we remember our mothers who 
 watched over and worked for us, who took 
 our part in many a scrape, and afterward 
 easily forgot them, whose hands and feet 
 seemed never to tire in the drudgery of 
 housework or in keeping time with the hum 
 of the old spinning wheel or the loom that 
 made the cloth that grew under their hands 
 into the garments that covered us then 
 often our eyes become blurred as we look 
 through a softening mist, and in the hush 
 of all vanity we are thankful for the 
 memory. 
 
 Deliberatively we can afford to look this 
 youngest of the old states squarely in the 
 face, and not claim one thing for her un 
 fairly. There is enough in her history to 
 
 205 
 
VERMONT 
 
 be proud of, and enough in the early dis 
 cipline of her people to make us glad for 
 its ministry in life. So, fairly claiming 
 much, we can afford to be candid and not 
 claim everything, even of the good. Ver 
 mont was not, then, in this country, the 
 home of learning, although many learned 
 men and women living and dead were born 
 there. We can never expect her to take 
 rank in this respect with Massachusetts 
 and Connecticut. There was no leisure 
 class, nor endowments of learning. The 
 people were too poor to found and maintain 
 and fill great schools* they were working 
 hard to get a living out of a rocky soil. 
 
 Nor was she the cradle of American liter 
 ature either in prose or poetry although 
 some good books have been written by Ver- 
 monters nor of art or science. A fierce 
 struggle for existence illy conduces to such 
 pursuits. Still many Vermonters have been 
 tolerably versed in these things, and have 
 made some records not to be ashamed of. 
 Vermont has always fostered statesman 
 ship, and practiced a high order of it very 
 early, and the behavior of her sons in battle 
 has always been her glory. 
 
 Rather has this grand state been the home 
 and developing soil of those qualities of 
 
 *Vermont University was founded in 1791; Middlebury 
 College in 1840. 
 
 206 
 
VERMONT 
 
 men and women that, well balanced, have 
 made them capable, not only of taking care 
 of themselves, but of becoming, the world 
 over, successful and even famous in every 
 honorable calling in life. Their success has 
 been striking, everywhere, and not least in 
 those fields of effort requiring intelligence, 
 skill and education. 
 
 Only a few of the youth could, in the 
 early time, go to the village academy, and 
 fewer could go to college ; but all could 
 graduate in the industrial school of life. Ver 
 mont has been pre-eminently a school of the 
 industrial faculties, where her people have 
 learned how to toil in multifarious direc 
 tions with their hands and simple tools, as 
 well as with their heads a great, rude, 
 manual-training school. Its graduates could 
 work and w r ere not afraid to, and they could 
 easily learn expertness in any new direction. 
 
 Hard experience taught them how to wait 
 as well as to work, and to be glad of any 
 return that was a gain or a growth. They 
 acquired in this school positive ideas of 
 ethics, and sometimes drew the lines amaz 
 ing fine. Their hatred of a mean act was 
 as lasting as it was intense, and it often fol 
 lowed a man to his grave. I remember 
 a good man of my native town who was 
 once defeated for the legislature and was in 
 disfavor ever after\vard, because he was said 
 
 207 
 
VERMONT 
 
 to have asked a man to vote for him. Of 
 course such a standard would not do for 
 Illinois, and might not for the Vermont of 
 today. But the hatred of these people for 
 mean acts ennobled their conception of the 
 good, strengthened their self-respect and 
 self-discipline, and made them a people 
 noted for sobriety, a sense of justice, and for 
 personal and public virtue. If their sons 
 and daughters who have wandered away 
 and around the world have anywhere for 
 gotten, and fallen from this high standard, 
 the guilt is upon them and the Vermont of 
 old will not forgive them. 
 
 208 
 
The Edge of the Cliff 
 
The Edge of the Cliff 
 
 Thou thing we cannot touch, nor yet can see. 
 Nor yet define ; thou something called by 
 
 men 
 Remorse : Say why should now my life, 
 
 my way 
 
 Be haunted by thy presence? Tell me, then. 
 Whence thou hast come, and why through 
 
 night and day 
 The sweets of life should bitter get from 
 
 thee. 
 
 A little fault in thoughtless moment done 
 Is all my sin ; no guile, no malice, naught 
 Toward man or thing was in my heart or 
 
 mind 
 Of ill ; but came the deed from want of 
 
 thought. 
 
 And now my peace of mind and all my joy, 
 My strength of nerve and power of heart 
 
 and head, 
 
 And all my rest by night, at thy approach, 
 Have from thy weird and awful presence 
 
 fled. 
 
 211 
 
THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF 
 
 My dreams thou hauntest like some demon 
 
 sprite, 
 
 To magnify my fault and make it seem 
 Tenfold more great than tis, and future days 
 To picture filled with woe an endless stream. 
 Thou say st to me, from all the good and 
 
 pure 
 Of earth and heaven, my life this act has 
 
 torn; 
 
 Thou temptest me to feel, to think, to say 
 The thought of hell would I had not been 
 
 born. 
 
 I sit at my repast or meet a friend, 
 Or something new or beautiful behold, 
 And feel at once the day of tranquil joy 
 Begin again to dawn, its clouds all gold, 
 When thou appearest, and, hurling in my 
 
 face 
 My fault to make me burn and writhe and 
 
 shake, 
 
 Lest others see it too, dost poison pour 
 Into the cup that else my thirst might slake. 
 I cannot move, nor see my mirrored face, 
 Nor hear my step, but thee meet everywhere. 
 Who art thou? Whence dost come, and 
 
 where reside? 
 
 For what was thy creation? Thyself declare! 
 Art devil, spirit of man or God himself? 
 And what for this offence dost thou require 
 From hand of mine? Whatever it is, that 
 
 take; 
 
 212 
 
THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF 
 
 Take all I have, all I to gain aspire, 
 
 And leave me shelterless, in rags and 
 
 starved ; 
 
 I ll court such fate, if thou wilt only go. 
 Consuming fire that burns within, to parch 
 My tongue and stop the blood within my 
 
 heart; 
 Thou poisoned arrow piercing through my 
 
 soul; 
 Thou lightning fierce and sharp that 
 
 comes athwart 
 My being; whip and rod that make me 
 
 smart ; 
 Thou mountain mass that grinds me down 
 
 to dust; 
 All these and more, thou terror, Oh, depart ! 
 
 
 213 
 
Women in Business as Affecting 
 Health and Morals 
 
Women in Business as Affecting 
 Health and Morals* 
 
 The entry into business pursuits in this 
 country during the last few decades, of a 
 large number of women, has changed to 
 some degree several of the social and 
 economic equations. The rush of women 
 into professional life has changed profes 
 sional equations, but that does not enter 
 into this discussion. Some women have 
 taken the places of men in business pursuits, 
 compelling the latter to seek other and often 
 less convenient occupations. Some of these 
 men have unfairly complained of the unfair 
 ness of their situation. The women have 
 generally worked for lower wages than men 
 did and do, in similar lines of work. This 
 has tended to turn men out of such positions 
 as smart women can fill. The men have 
 thus, so far, overcrowded the occupations 
 they have gone to, or they have had to 
 
 *Reprinted from the Bulletin of the American Academy of 
 Medicine, October, 1908. 
 
 217 
 
 
WOMEN IN BUSINESS AS AFFECTING 
 
 create still other occupations wherewith to 
 keep their hands busy. The women have 
 been perhaps less constant as employes 
 than men are ; if they marry they usually 
 leave their business situations, as they ought 
 to. This accounts in part for their lower 
 wages. 
 
 In the past few years a great deal of dis 
 cussion has occurred as to the influence pro 
 duced upon the women themselves and upon 
 society at large, by so large a number of 
 them forsaking domestic life for business 
 pursuits. Apprehension has been felt for 
 the health and morals of the business 
 woman and for those of society as influ 
 enced by her business life. Is her health 
 impaired, and so the health of her children 
 if she comes to have any, and does her occu 
 pation tend to undermine her own moral 
 integrity or to harm society? We are told 
 that these women rarely become home- 
 makers, and mothers, and that the birth-rate 
 of their classes of the community tends to 
 fall below their death-rate, and that there 
 fore their families are running out and will 
 eventually be gone. 
 
 It is true that a large proportion of busi 
 ness women never marry, or marry late in 
 life, and so, for a part of their lives at least, 
 are taken out of the home-making and child- 
 bearing classes. For the weal of the race or 
 
 218 
 
HEALTH AND MORALS 
 
 the particular social group, this may be a 
 misfortune. It is easy to argue and it seems 
 a truism, and from some points of view it 
 is a truism, that every woman should marry 
 and make a home. But this is in the first 
 place manifestly impossible and in the 
 second place it is the woman s own affair. 
 The trend of modern civilization is toward 
 more individualism and more personal 
 liberty of action for all people, women and 
 men and children alike. The time is past 
 when the woman can be made to sink what 
 she regards as her own personal interest for 
 that of her race. Whether or not it is finally 
 right or wrong, she will act mostly for her 
 own personal interest as she understands it, 
 if she can ; and it is hard to argue against 
 her right to do so. Her rights and preroga 
 tives are self-evident in the light of modern 
 standards. It may be that, averaging the 
 sex, the woman s own best interest is iden 
 tical with that of the race, but she will not 
 always of herself see it so or be convinced 
 of it. 
 
 A business experience for a woman does 
 not unfit her for domestic life, but usually 
 makes her take to it with more zest if she 
 has a good chance. Nor does she prove a 
 less useful housekeeper or a less wholesome 
 mother. She probably less often is a mother 
 and less repeatedly one, than if she marries 
 
 219 
 
WOMEN IN BUSINESS AS AFFECTING 
 
 earlier. Her business experience certainly 
 enhances her power and efficiency as a use 
 ful social unit in the community where she 
 lives; and this is a gain of some value for 
 society. 
 
 It is said that women by a life of business 
 lose the opportunity and shirk the duty of 
 perpetuating their own families. This is all 
 true, but society has small reason to com 
 plain. The same thing happens to married 
 women of luxury and social indulgences ; 
 their families are running out too, and their 
 places are being taken by lowlier families 
 that are coming up with more numerous 
 children the very best material for citizen 
 ship. Thus the single business woman al 
 ways, and the pampered rich married 
 woman often, contribute to the same social 
 result a result that is not good for the race. 
 And for this offense the business woman 
 is much less to be blamed than the married 
 woman referred to. That it is most natural 
 for every woman to marry is true. The race 
 interests are thus best subserved ; health in 
 terests are also subserved by it, since it is a 
 fact that those women are least sick and live 
 longest who, well after their youth, marry, 
 and who bear children not too often. 
 
 Business work occasionally reduces the 
 vitality of the woman and leads to some 
 actual disease, but this is not common 
 
 220 
 
 
HEALTH AND MORALS 
 
 unless she works for very low wages and 
 under depressing conditions, for while she 
 is working she is usually better satisfied 
 than with idleness. Idleness and useless- 
 ness are to a sensible woman the most de 
 moralizing of influences. I have known 
 many women to take up some occupation 
 not because they needed work, but solely to 
 escape these conditions. Reckoning all 
 women who work in business outside their 
 homes, or in their homes upon non-domestic 
 work taken in, I am sure that most of them 
 work because they have to earn their living, 
 or believe they do ; and a numerical majority 
 of them work for low wages, work too long 
 hours daily, and under conditions of bad 
 hygiene. Many of these women break down 
 and become chronic invalids or die. The 
 bad air, the confinement of their work, the 
 lack of variation in muscular activity and 
 general exercise, and the depressing moral 
 influences, are too much for their frail pow 
 ers, and they go to the wall. 
 
 One of the dangers to which unmarried 
 women, who are not overworked, are ex 
 posed is the tendency to become eccentric, 
 whimsical, casuistic and cranky as the years 
 pass. So great is this tendency that some 
 students of the subject contend that every 
 woman should marry even if she makes a 
 foolish marriage, so as to prevent the calam- 
 
 221 
 
WOMEN IN BUSINESS AS AFFECTING 
 
 ity referred to. A single woman of forty 
 or over who has kept her poise and sense of 
 proportion is a very superior, if a very rare 
 person. One of the best antidotes to this 
 warping tendency beside matrimony is 
 for her to have some steady work in busi 
 ness, with both men and women associates. 
 
 We are told that a woman in a business 
 situation, especially when working with 
 men and women associates, tends to lose 
 some of her feminine charm and innocency, 
 and that she is likely to become bold and 
 mannish. But boldness is a matter of tem 
 perament and native tendency; it is not 
 largely made by working or not working. 
 If the work tends in either direction it is 
 toward less boldness. As to the charm and 
 innocency, business occupation does not im 
 pair either, unless you mean by these words 
 ignorance and uselessness. Such is the real 
 meaning often carried by these terms. 
 
 We are told that a business life for 
 women tends to immorality. As a general 
 proposition it is not true. The business 
 woman, especially in the higher classes of 
 work, is less likely to go wrong than her 
 idle sister. She learns the realities of life 
 and the dangers that beset the career of 
 women learns them better by the very 
 working. She can take better care of herself 
 under temptation and danger, is more to be 
 
 222 
 
HEALTH AND MORALS 
 
 trusted, and she has more essential refine 
 ment, than the idle woman of the same class 
 who always hovers within the protecting 
 shadow of her home. 
 
 A few women on starvation wages go 
 wrong, largely in consequence of this factor 
 possibly a few more than would fall if 
 they were not so employed. Many of these 
 are girls who, if they would wisely take 
 domestic service instead of some grinding 
 clerkships, could have an easy and wholly 
 reputable life and be able to lay up money. 
 There is a fad that is as prevalent as it is 
 foolish, to the effect that "business" life 
 even if at starvation wages is far better than 
 a "work" life with less physical and mental 
 fatigue, and more comforts and money. It 
 is distinctly an unmoral if not an immoral 
 tendency. This is the direction in which the 
 greatest harm comes of women working in 
 business pursuits; and it cannot be denied 
 that here is a menace to the best interest of 
 society as well as to the health and char 
 acter of these workers. A foolish feeling of 
 cast, a fashion, has developed ; really, it al 
 ways existed but seems lately to have be 
 come exaggerated. The girl clerk is socially 
 above the cook and second girl, although she 
 is half as fortunate in every other particular 
 in wages, physical labor, social protection, 
 
 223 
 
WOMEN IN BUSINESS AS AFFECTING 
 
 and all general comforts, except the com 
 fort of her pride. 
 
 While this prejudice does incalculable 
 injury to the unfortunate girls themselves, 
 there is little ground for hope that it will 
 disappear, so foolish are people whenever 
 their pride even their foolish pride is 
 touched. A young man will gladly begin his 
 career by working on a farm or in a shop, 
 covered with grime and doing the meanest 
 sort of work. He will not lose cast or suf 
 fer in pride indeed he may be very proud 
 of his exploit. But ask the young woman 
 to begin in a kitchen and she will spurn 
 you and take a cheap clerkship at less wages 
 than it costs to board her. And she is deaf 
 to all arguments against her decision. 
 
 The sense of independence and self-re 
 liance that comes of the experiences of a 
 business life, saves for character many 
 women who would otherwise be lost by 
 ignorance and idleness. These, I believe, 
 much more than outnumber the other class 
 those who go wrong because of the bad 
 temptations of their work. 
 
 But there are yet other disadvantages to 
 the women themselves as well as to society, 
 from their business experience. Some of 
 them who are smart and not overworked, 
 develop a degree of independence that some 
 times amounts to a misfortune. The girl 
 
 224 
 
HEALTH AND MORALS 
 
 who lives at home and does not pay for her 
 board, who uses all her earnings for pin 
 money when her parents are quite able to 
 give this to her, but who is too haughty to 
 ask for it, and prefers to work and earn it 
 herself, is sometimes one of this class. By 
 working she perhaps escapes some domestic 
 and social duties, and she likes the excite 
 ment and novelty of business it is such a 
 variation from the humdrum of home. She 
 is developing egoism and selfishness rather 
 than grace and she is ignorant of this fact. 
 The enjoyment of such freedom leads many 
 women in the aggregate to fail to accept 
 good opportunities for marriage and a 
 larger career when these are offered. In 
 business life the girl dresses well if she can 
 afford it, spends considerable money upon 
 herself and so her demand for finery grows ; 
 likewise, the list of eligible husbands within 
 her reach grows less, for, to her, eligibility 
 means good salaries or fortunes as well as 
 personal fitness personal fitness of the 
 angelic sort. Charmed by present inde 
 pendence and the luxuries that she can com 
 mand, she rarely accumulates money (which 
 would be good business), and she forgets 
 that some day she may cease to earn, and 
 so she often misses those larger and more 
 permanent joys that she is entitled to. This 
 is her moral loss to say nothing of her 
 
 225 
 
WOMEN IN BUSINESS AS AFFECTING 
 
 acquisition of some self-centered selfishness 
 in exchange for the wholesome unselfishness 
 with which she started out. 
 
 The restraints which society places upon 
 the activities and conduct of women is gall 
 ing to many of them. Perhaps to most 
 women these restraints are balanced by 
 their sense of protection and their safety in 
 their domestic life, their homes and children. 
 They easily adjust themselves to their sit 
 uation ; they know that society places no 
 such restrictions upon men, but as men earn 
 most of the money and are stronger and 
 useful to lean upon, these women do not 
 complain. Moreover, the laws of many 
 states give women large pecuniary and other 
 advantages based solely on sex, and on the 
 theory that the female sex is the weaker of 
 the two and needs protection. 
 
 But some women do complain, even rebel 
 against their restrictions. They glory in any 
 attitude of independence that is not perilous 
 to their good name. They hate chaperon- 
 age and the restraints of dress, even while 
 they try to follow the changing fashions 
 in clothes. They hate to be always "proper." 
 They preach woman s rights, and delight in 
 dressing themselves as men. Some of them 
 freely wish they were men, and occasionally 
 one adopts man s clothes, seeks masculine 
 
 226 
 
HEALTH AND MORALS 
 
 employment, and for months and years 
 keeps the world in ignorance of her sex. 
 
 A business life increases this sense of re 
 bellion in a considerable number of women, 
 and so far its influence is positively bad ; 
 for the increase in rebellion fails to bring 
 compensating joys to the individual it 
 lessens her happiness and good health, to 
 say nothing of the reflected injury to the 
 community. Women mostly range them 
 selves into two cardinal and major classes: 
 those who wish for domestic life, for home 
 and children ; and those whose tastes run 
 toward independence and a business or pro 
 fessional career. Some of the first class 
 (which is vastly the larger one) are obliged 
 to go into business but are always ready to 
 abandon it for a wholesome domestic life. 
 Some of the second class accept domestic 
 life without seeking it ; being rather enticed 
 into it they nevertheless make good homes, 
 and they like this life better than they did 
 the struggle of business. They are generally 
 surprised to find vastly more happiness in 
 their homes than they had expected. This 
 is the case of the woman coming to her own. 
 The change is toward more unselfishness 
 and more pleasure of the higher sort for 
 the larger joys, and the most enduring, are 
 fostered by unselfishness and close con 
 genial fellowships, by mutualness in work 
 and gains, in privations and sorrows. 
 227 
 
Commencement Address 
 
Commencement Address* 
 
 The ceremonial of commencement day is 
 peculiarly an American institution ; the mu 
 sic, the speeches, the formal presentation of 
 diplomas, and the flowers we accentuate to 
 the utmost. \Ve do this at all stages of our 
 educational life, even to our final degrees 
 from a university (if we are so fortunate as 
 to get them). 
 
 In European countries the universities 
 have nothing of this sort. If they have a 
 formal commencement for the children and 
 the youths, the universities disdain it as 
 something adapted to childhood but not for 
 men. The American way is the better; 
 graduation is a distinct epoch in our lives; 
 we reckon time as before or after we were 
 graduated. Then it does us good to throw 
 off care, put on our good clothes, and give 
 thanks that we have reached one goal at 
 least. Especially may we felicitate our- 
 
 *Training School for Nurses, Hospital of the Good 
 Samaritan, Los Angeles, July 24, 1907. 
 
 231 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 selves if we believe that by our graduation 
 we have taken on the mantle of a profession. 
 
 But this day is fittingly also a reviewing 
 time, a time to stop, take breath, and make 
 a new orientation, to the end that we may, 
 if possible, know exactly where we stand. 
 Yesterday was a day of studentship and 
 struggle for a diploma; and rest from a lot 
 of drudgery. Tomorrow new duties will be 
 upon us, and some sort of a yoke, hard or 
 soft, for our necks, that cannot be shaken 
 off. Nothing stops or stands still; on this 
 day we seem to have arrived somewhere. 
 To what issue have we come? What have 
 we really accomplished? Could we have 
 done better, and are those who come after 
 us likely to find a better way? 
 
 As you enter the guild of trained nurses 
 you can truthfully say that some things 
 have been accomplished. They have been 
 done by those who have preceded you, and 
 they have been done, perhaps, as well as 
 was possible under the circumstances. Let 
 me mention a few of them. 
 
 The trained nurses of today have attained 
 professional rank. A profession is made by 
 education in a science and art whose appli 
 cation to the problems of life requires ex 
 pert skill and judgment. Eliminate the last 
 condition, and take the science away from 
 the art, and you have merely a trade. The 
 232 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 training schools left that state of things be 
 hind more than a decade ago. Fairly and 
 honestly, you are a profession. 
 
 Your ranks are showing the results of 
 more drill and better education. The best 
 schools now require as a condition of admis 
 sion to their classes a high-school diploma 
 or some college work ; three years of train 
 ing are necessary for graduation ; and a part 
 of the training must be in laboratories 
 wherein the sciences that concern the nurse s 
 work are taught practically. This has been 
 accomplished by several logical steps of 
 progress during the last quarter century. 
 Some day an American university may have 
 a nurses college as now our universities 
 have medical, law, and engineering colleges. 
 It is logical to expect this some time within 
 a decade or two. While we wait for its 
 coming let us make it hasten by bringing 
 the work of the schools up to university 
 standard. I think even now the time has 
 come for the best schools to drop the name 
 "training school" and use the word "col 
 lege." 
 
 Your guild has earned the respect of the 
 community and of the profession of medi 
 cine. A diploma from a training school of 
 high grade is more than evidence it is 
 proof of personal superiority, of culture and 
 of high character, as well as professional 
 
 233 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 skill. You have risen to dignity, some of 
 you are even regarded by many of us as 
 almost a part of the profession of medicine. 
 You are surely invaluable to the medical 
 profession, and are a large factor in the sav 
 ing and preservation of human life. 
 
 The training schools and their graduates 
 have created a new and nobler sphere for 
 woman s activities and usefulness. They 
 have elevated the standing of woman in the 
 minds of the best people the enlightened 
 world over. Society has learned through 
 them that women can do more things, have 
 more responsibilities and acquit themselves 
 well; can be trusted farther, can even be 
 trusted to take care of themselves without 
 chaperones. The prolongation of human 
 life, the lengthening of the generations of 
 mankind, as shown by the statistics, are 
 without doubt due in some measure to the 
 work of the trained nurses, and you may 
 fairly insist on this claim. 
 
 The achievements so far made promise 
 others to come, and they doubtless will 
 come. But large duties rest upon you 
 on account of this promise, for the new 
 nurses must be better educated, and must 
 be women stronger in every way for educa 
 tion and for higher duties. The older nurses 
 must study to keep up with their profession. 
 They must read new books, take their pro- 
 
 234 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 fessional journals and study them, and keep 
 in touch with the new scientific facts that 
 are involved in the profession of nursing. 
 
 There must be more of the spirit profes 
 sional. Every graduate is to some degree 
 the custodian of the reputation of the pro 
 fession. This must be raised, it must never 
 be permitted to fall. A true professional 
 spirit compels us to do two things always: 
 to stand up for the rights, dignity and 
 emoluments of the profession ; and to culti 
 vate in ourselves perfection in its science 
 and art. It is, to our shame, a humanish 
 weakness to neglect the latter. 
 
 Nurses must observe an increasingly high 
 order of professional ethics. There are cer 
 tain things that we are tempted to do, which 
 we are often guilty of, but which nurses 
 ought to shun as a mortal sin. These things 
 are mostly offences of the tongue and we 
 are told that a woman s tongue is, if possible, 
 as reckless as that of a man. You have a 
 duty to each other, a duty to the patients 
 and their families, and a duty to the profes 
 sion of medicine on which you must rely ; 
 and these duties are as sacred as religion. 
 Each nurse would probably define these 
 duties a little differently from every other 
 one. It must be a matter of conscience with 
 each. But the guiding principle for conduct 
 to each one is, and must be through all 
 
 235 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 time, to bring comfort and good, and only 
 these, to the patient, to his family, to the 
 nursing profession, to the public at large, 
 and to the patron profession of medicine. 
 
 No small part of this ethical ambition is 
 to acquire the habit of patience with the 
 weak, and a power of mental impertur 
 bability under difficulties. Another part of it 
 is for the nurse to learn the great art of 
 adaptability, the knack of getting along with 
 people, and doing it without friction on 
 either side. To accomplish this means to 
 submerge our unworthy and needless con 
 ceits, in a spirit of helpfulness to others, 
 that shall be free from every shade of self 
 ishness. And this means to many of us an 
 almost complete metamorphosis of our emo 
 tional natures. 
 
 I make no doubt that the class here pres 
 ent is a company of very remarkable young 
 women. It must be unnecessary to say 
 much to them about their special needs at 
 this time, with their heads full of the lore of 
 the last three years, and their spirits full of 
 the glamour of this occasion and the value 
 of these diplomas. Maybe it is safer for me 
 to make this observation because I know 
 them personally so little. 
 
 But it will profit you to remember that 
 you still dwell on the earth, and that tomor 
 row or some early morrow will open with 
 
 236 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 new and severe duties for you all. As you 
 have been well taught through three years 
 of wholesome lives of hard work, it be 
 hooves you to continue to be wholesome. 
 Don t gossip about your patients, not even 
 with other nurses; it is womanish but dis 
 creditable to do so. Remember that the lives 
 and secrets of the sick that come to you in 
 the line of your professional services are 
 absolutely inviolable, and that for you to 
 divulge them to anybody, unless demanded 
 for the good of the sick, is disloyalty. 
 
 Do not have too much dignity and too 
 many projecting elbows to be hurt by the 
 often blundering well people who hover 
 about the beds of the sick, and by irrespon 
 sible invalids. Neither of these classes is 
 always responsible, and both are liable to be 
 at any moment in a condition of hyperes- 
 thesia and unreasonableness, and greatly 
 in need of your patience and forbearance. 
 When you are off duty stand on your dig 
 nity, and remember that you are a woman 
 and that you cannot afford to do or say un 
 womanly things. 
 
 Fill your minds with new professional lore 
 if you can, to the end that you may be more 
 expert and useful. Then engage your minds 
 with the best talk and the best books for a 
 superb and healthful woman to have. Study 
 to be wise more than learned. Do not get 
 
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COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 cross and leave a case because the patient 
 refuses to obey the doctor and you ; both the 
 doctor and you might be extremists and 
 rather academic in some of your rules and 
 demands. Remember that the patient and 
 his friends have some rights as citizens. 
 There is no Procrustean bed for you to use 
 in the care of the sick ; you cannot make all 
 sick people fit your rules. You are to help 
 heal and comfort the sick, not to discipline 
 them. Well people may be disciplined some 
 times, but very rarely the sick, and these 
 never in anger. And if the patient needs 
 discipline, he himself and his friends are the 
 natural instruments to this end ; if you at 
 tempt it, it must be with a hand of velvet. 
 Remember, when by your forbearance and 
 self-control in an exasperating situation, you 
 have shamed a vexatious patient into con 
 trition and gentleness, that you have trans 
 figured the two chief actors in that drama: 
 you have shown that you can be truly great, 
 and you are the mistress of your soul. More 
 over, you have taught the patient the won 
 derful lesson that he can discipline himself, 
 even when he is sick. So you have helped 
 him to a symptom of superiority. 
 
 The rules for nursing that you have 
 learned in your hospital may be the best in 
 all the world, especially when they are sup 
 plemented by the superior doctors whom I 
 
 238 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 hope you may always work with ; but many 
 of them are general rules and must some 
 times yield. Like good soldiers, you must 
 obey orders and follow the rules in general, 
 but it is a brave and a good lieutenant who 
 knows when to violate a rule for the good of 
 the service, and that sort of an one you 
 must become. The rules of the doctor must 
 be executed with common sense, and he 
 cannot hope to tell you of all the possible 
 exceptions that may arise, and that a woman 
 with sense and wit will know how to deal 
 with ; he expects you to use your thought 
 and judgment as well as your memory. I 
 have known a nurse to wrangle with a pa 
 tient for an hour trying to induce him to 
 take his pill after his meal as it had been 
 ordered, when he insisted on taking it in the 
 midst of the meal, because he had discov 
 ered that when taken after the meal it was 
 apt to stick in the lower part of the throat. 
 She was a machine ; you, please, be some 
 thing better than a machine. 
 
 Do not try to be doctors ; don t prescribe 
 for, but nurse the sick ; learn to say that you 
 don t know; do not try to answer the thou 
 sand questions that patients put to you 
 about the nature of their diseases and the 
 philosophy of their symptoms. You cannot 
 do it, and to try is likely to cause you trou 
 ble. I have known a nurse who tried to 
 
 239 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 answer the most abstruse questions in medi 
 cine and philosophy because a patient asked 
 them ; questions which later being put to the 
 attending physician, he was obliged to say 
 belonged to the realm of the unknown, and 
 that he would not guess. The nurse had 
 guessed at the answers, and was now prop 
 erly humiliated. 
 
 I know the temptation of the nurse is to 
 treat the invalid as she wrongly treats a 
 child, whose questions she thinks are to be 
 answered in a way that will satisfy the in 
 quirer for the moment. But many of the 
 patients are mentally keen, their minds are 
 not befogged and they have memories; and 
 it is a calamity for a nurse to discover 
 that her mistake in pretending to knowledge 
 which she does not possess, has covered her 
 with shame. There is no reason for such 
 humiliation, since there is no occasion for 
 such officiousness. She always has this ref 
 uge for a vexatious question : she can any 
 time say, "I don t know/ or "That is not a 
 nurse s but a doctor s question. Please ask 
 your physician about it." Let her hide be 
 hind this bulwark and then watch the doctor 
 as he squirms in his attempt to answer logic 
 ally and scientifically the patient s question. 
 
 Don t comment on the wisdom or unwis 
 dom of the doctor s treatment; or on the 
 comparative merits of different doctors. Of 
 
 240 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 course, you will have your ideas on these 
 matters, for you are not made of wood ; but 
 you must think such thoughts inside your 
 head, never aloud in the home of the sick, 
 save under the most exceptional circum 
 stances. 
 
 On the other hand, you will understand 
 that it is due to you that the attitude of the 
 doctor toward you shall be one of candor, 
 kindness, loyalty, and dignity. If he has 
 been snappish to you or disparaged you to 
 the patient or the family, or failed to sup 
 port you fairly in a case, you are at liberty 
 to shame him by asking if he really thinks 
 he has treated you, his assistant, fairly. But 
 if you do this it must be done as a dignified 
 woman speaks, and always by the rules of 
 the court of chancery you must come with 
 clean hands, you must have been yourself 
 loyal and true to the patient and the doctor. 
 You cannot expect justice unless you have 
 done justice. 
 
 Have recreations outside of your profes 
 sional duties, and let them be such as will 
 make you stronger and healthier, and none 
 the less a woman. Have outdoor exercise 
 every day, even when you are closely tied 
 to a case. If you have but five minutes a 
 day, take it to run around the block ; don t 
 be shocked if I say that I mean run, not 
 walk; and swing your arms widely as you 
 
 241 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 go. What would the neighbors say at such 
 a performance ! They would probably say 
 you were an efficient nurse, with independ 
 ence enough not to be foolish. Only narrow 
 women would disparage you, and every com 
 mendable man would admire you for it. Do 
 not get cranky a cranky woman for a nurse 
 is a constant menace ; she needs to nurse 
 herself into a better spirit, or, that failing, 
 to enter a convent. Outdoor life, exercise, 
 good digestion, good blood, long hours in 
 bed when off duty, wholesome foods and no 
 stimulants these are enemies of crankiness. 
 Strength, poise, calmness and a sense of hu 
 mor these make for power and good work 
 in every exacting profession. 
 
 While most of your patients will recover, 
 some of them inevitably will die, and you 
 are not called upon to regard a death as a 
 reflection upon the excellence of your care. 
 You do not contract that the patient shall 
 recover, but you do undertake that in your 
 particular ministrations to him you shall be 
 efficiency itself beyond that the doctor (if 
 any finite being) takes the responsibility. 
 Life is too full of responsibilities for you to 
 take any that belong to others see that you 
 do not usurp to your loss those that belong 
 to the physician. It is a pathetic truth that 
 many of the best women are most likely to 
 take upon themselves these uncalled for bur- 
 
 242 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 dens. For this tragedy I pray that there 
 may be some compensation in the great here 
 after, for there seems to be scant recom 
 pense in this life. 
 
 Remember that flowers are always beauti 
 ful, that artistic things ought to be comfort 
 ing to the soul, and that it is the ministry of 
 music to lull the restless spirit, and to brush 
 away the cares of its day, and carry it to a 
 higher level. Try to cultivate the spirit of 
 these influences. And if you do not have it 
 already and if you cannot have it God pity 
 you then cultivate a love for. babies and 
 children ; they are the men and women of to 
 morrow, and in their growth and develop 
 ment you have the most profitable, interest 
 ing and joyous study in all the world. 
 
 In the time when the older of this class 
 were in their cradles and playing with their 
 toes a very long time to them, perhaps, but 
 only a moment in human history it was 
 just dawning on our minds that when people 
 are sick they deserve to be nursed by expert 
 hands. Theretofore, and to a large degree 
 since then, the best nurses were the nearest 
 of kin to the patients; the next best were 
 the so-called professional nurses who were 
 largely self-taught and supposed to be good 
 nurses by instinct. Neither class was satis 
 factory; the near kin were, in severe cases, 
 too anxious and irresponsible, and often got 
 
 243 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 so worn out by watching as to be useless; 
 and the monthly nurse was, while often ex 
 cellent, often ruled by numerous whims and 
 myths which she inflicted on the sick. 
 
 Then it was that the first halting steps 
 were made to train women for nurses. Quick 
 ly the training schools developed, touched 
 as they were and could not fail to be, by the 
 growing light of modern pedagogy and mod 
 ern medicine. With the genuine educational 
 movement the training schools had to ad 
 vance, and they had to come up to the high 
 standard they have now attained. 
 
 But why are there not training schools 
 for men as well as women? The attempt 
 was made, but we now never hear of them, 
 while there is a flourishing training school 
 for women in every city. Formerly sick 
 men were often nursed by men, and they 
 usually had the poorest nursing. The rea 
 son of this is fixed in nature and is as lasting 
 as the race. It is the spiritual motherhood 
 of woman that foreordained her for this mis 
 sion, and no man ever grows so old or so 
 crusty that he passes beyond the need of 
 this divine influence about him when he is 
 sick. 
 
 Women are the natural caretakers of man 
 kind; their inborn endowment for the care 
 of the infant is a gift that ends only with 
 
 244 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 death in every true woman. It is they who 
 look after the physical wants of us all, and, 
 more than men, they are the guardians and 
 inspiration of the better ideals in life and 
 conduct. So the world is nursed by women 
 to the enormous increase in the comfort of 
 the sick, and to the lengthening of the aver 
 age span of human life. So the schools 
 grow, and grow better and stronger. So 
 woman s place in the world is enlarged and 
 dignified by the trained nurse movement. It 
 has done as much toward this uplift as any 
 other influence, with the possible exception 
 of that of the general teaching profession of 
 women. 
 
 A man never grows beyond some memory 
 of the time when most of his world was his 
 mother ; he never wanders so far, or sins so 
 vilely, that he loses wholly the homey feel 
 ing when a quiet woman is working about 
 the house and when he is sick unto death 
 no touch is so welcome as that of a woman, 
 even because she is a woman. So the wo 
 man nurse is destined to comfort and solace 
 the sick till the last of the race dies out. 
 This is not merely her mission and natural 
 work ; it is also her opportunity to help 
 transform society for its benefit physically 
 and morally ; and this mission she can in no 
 wise neglect. This duty rests down upon 
 
 245 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 every one of you, and you cannot escape it 
 if you would. 
 
 A common attitude for the quiet and re 
 treating nurse is to think that, as she is but 
 a poor little weak factor in the great human 
 combination, so she can do nothing but go 
 as and where the crowd influences move her. 
 But this is wrong and false ; no one is so 
 humble that he cannot lift somewhere and 
 something; .and, after the struggle is over, 
 the honor is no less to the private soldier 
 who does his duty than to the commander- 
 in-chief. 
 
 Don t attempt the spectacular rarely did 
 anyone ever attempt it and succeed in doing 
 any good by it, when the effort was meant to 
 be spectacular. The best audience for your 
 serious work is rarely a crowd of your 
 shouting friends your personal conscience 
 overbalances that a hundred times. 
 
 Do not expect to be thanked for all the 
 good you do others ; for those you help will 
 not always thank you. Sometimes they will 
 wish to, but will not know how. No one is 
 greatly fitted to serve others till he is be 
 yond the need of praise however precious 
 this may be. Be sure of your own justifi 
 cation and satisfaction in right doing, for 
 that is the only adequate reward you can 
 always be sure of in this life. 
 
 I beg to say, finally, that there is today 
 
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COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 open to your hands one of the greatest tasks 
 for the guild of trained nurses that ever in 
 vited the interest of those who love their 
 kind. Since men have sinned and died need 
 lessly, there has never been a better oppor 
 tunity to do good, and unless the nurses help 
 actively the highest good can never be done. 
 Moreover, it is in exact line with their duties 
 and work ; for the nurse s work does not end 
 with the sick room. It is her duty, as it is 
 the duty of every physician, to help, even 
 compel, people to avoid sickness and keep 
 as well as possible. To compel people to 
 keep well and so cut down the needed in 
 come of two professions, is a form of altru 
 ism that is unique in history, and you cannot 
 and must not fail to practice it. This path 
 of duty has been chalked out by recent dis 
 coveries, so that nobody need miss it. There 
 is one disease that afflicts at some time more 
 than half of all the people; that comes in 
 manifold forms and degrees, that makes 
 more havoc of death than any other; and 
 that disease is largely preventable as well as 
 curable. It is called the great white plague, 
 but a better name would be the ubiquitous 
 and needless plague. 
 
 Now we know, doctors and nurses alike, 
 how to prevent the spread of tuberculosis, 
 and how to give the best chance of recovery 
 when it begins. These facts are known to a 
 
 247 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 demonstration, but the people are mostly 
 ignorant of them ; they are dull and cannot 
 learn, or they are obstinate and will not. 
 Nothing but a campaign by the united pro 
 fessions, with what aid can be got of the 
 public-spirited lay people who will learn, can 
 suffice to spread this gospel and save to the 
 people more years of life, as well as to save 
 them incalculable treasure. 
 
 To prevent the spread of tuberculosis by 
 destroying the sputum of the infected, and 
 to put the victims in possession of the 
 proven aids to early recovery, are among the 
 greatest economic needs of the world to 
 day. You can do even more than the doc 
 tors, for you are the natural missionaries of 
 the race. 
 
 The people need to be educated in the 
 indispensable steps necessary to compass 
 the ends I have named. The truths are few 
 and vital, and they run counter to many of 
 our fixed notions that have centuries of 
 usage back of them. 
 
 The people must put aside their fear 
 of harm from fresh air, and learn that 
 by living in the open a consumptive or any 
 other invalid has a larger percentage of 
 certainty of recovery than under any other 
 conditions. Only by insistence a million 
 times over will they be made to give up their 
 whims and learn the better way. They 
 
 248 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 firmly believe now that a tight house to en 
 close the family is a blessing of life for every 
 one to seek, but I know, and you know, that 
 in almost exact proportion as we get out of 
 the house and keep out of it other things 
 being equal do we recover from tubercu 
 losis. And we are now finding the proof 
 that in most of the other infectious diseases, 
 like typhoid fever and pneumonia, the out 
 door air is quite as useful for a remedy 
 toward recovery. 
 
 As to the spitting nuisance, men are the 
 chief sinners. They have grown into the 
 habit as though it were evidence of man 
 hood ; in boyhood it differentiates them from 
 girls as much as swearing and the coarser 
 slang. For them to learn that their expec 
 toration is poisonous to others, and must be 
 destroyed, and that they must avoid their 
 careless spitting, is a tough lesson indeed. 
 
 This lesson you can help in a powerful 
 way to teach. More than this, you can 
 know and you must teach the people how 
 they can take care of their tuberculous ones 
 at their homes mostly not in, but just out 
 side the doors thereof and bring to them 
 most or all of the benefits of the best sana 
 toria for tuberculosis, which means to give 
 them the best possible chance of recovery. 
 
 Many of these people are poor and cannot 
 go away to sanatoria or to climates for their 
 
 249 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 
 
 health, and most of them ought not to go 
 away. Left to themselves they can never 
 have these surpassing benefits at home, and 
 they are almost sure to infect other mem 
 bers of their own families. Both these ca 
 lamities are avoidable ; how to shun them 
 few know outside of your profession and 
 mine. We do know, and because of this 
 fact we are responsible. We cannot, as once 
 was possible, plead ignorance as an excuse 
 for our indifference and indolence. We have 
 had the light, we have entered into knowl 
 edge, and we are in some measure our broth 
 er s keepers. The duty is upon us sore and 
 heavy, and we cannot escape it, and if we 
 take up the burden gracefully and carry it 
 cheerfully, it will be a joy and not a burden. 
 
 250 
 
The Best Bath for Mankind 
 
The Best Bath for Mankind* 
 
 The vast majority of people in civilized 
 life bathe their bodies occasionally for pleas 
 ure or cleanliness, or both. Even some of 
 the lower animals do the same thing. Only 
 a small minority of the people of this coun 
 try ablute their entire bodies oftener than 
 once a week. They wash their hands and 
 faces, their feet and other more soiled parts 
 of the body perhaps quite often ; but for the 
 whole body once a week is a liberal esti 
 mate. Even this unusual indulgence is 
 rarely taken so much on the theory of the 
 requirements of health as for the supposed 
 demands of decency. 
 
 But a respectable number of people, and 
 the more refined and cultivated among 
 them, have for long had the habit of fre 
 quent bathing. Some of the ancients had 
 the habit, and it has been sporadic through 
 the centuries. In recent decades it has 
 
 *Reprinted from "The Journal of the Outdoor L,ife," 
 May, 1907. 
 
 253 
 
THE BEST BATH FOR MANKIND 
 
 become rather popular among the select 
 class referred to. 
 
 Their motives in this overmuch of wash 
 ing themselves are apt to be mixed, and 
 mixed variously in different individuals. 
 Some of them think that to be clean is to 
 be good; they recite often the saying about 
 cleanliness and godliness. Others think no 
 body can be well who does not bathe his 
 body often ; many of these take a bath once 
 a day, a few take two or three of them daily 
 -which last is evidence (but not proof) of 
 gentle aberration of mind, a want of the 
 normal sense of proportion. 
 
 The cold bath in the morning before 
 dressing has attained a certain degree of 
 popularity, especially among vigorous people 
 who little need any such aid to power. These 
 advocate and defend it strenuously as a 
 thing of hygienic safety. 
 
 Many people prefer hot baths, but rarely 
 take them in the morning for fear of cold- 
 catching or some other harm unless, in 
 deed, they follow the hot water with a dash 
 of cold. 
 
 The popularity of the cold morning bath 
 is not based on pleasure in taking it, for few 
 people truly enjoy it except in very hot 
 weather, but all who are able to secure a re 
 action of body heat and sense of vigor after 
 the cold bath of course enjoy that, and so 
 
 254 
 
THE BEST BATH FOR MANKIND 
 
 fancy that they have pleasure in the cold 
 plunge. Nobody enjoys getting out of a 
 warm bed and into a tub of cold water, and 
 whoso says he does needs to revise his use 
 of words, and to remember that truth and 
 accuracy consist with the universe, and are 
 in the long run commendable. 
 
 Another reason why some people take the 
 cold morning bath, not why they ought to 
 take it, but why they do, is the widespread, 
 fallacious notion that a hot bath, especially 
 at other times than the bed hour, is danger 
 ous to health and even to life. So deeply 
 grounded is this idea among some good 
 people that many of them would as soon 
 think of taking poison as a hot bath in the 
 morning, unless it were followed by a cold 
 plunge or douche. They believe the dash of 
 cold water may safely close the "pores" of 
 the skin, which they think have been danger 
 ously opened by the heat, and so prevent 
 some threatened but wholly supposititious 
 calamity. 
 
 The tenacity and satisfaction with which 
 people seem to cling to this false notion of 
 physiology would be more amusing if it did 
 not cause them so much injury and discom 
 fort. Hundreds of people, the well and sick 
 alike, are daily forcing themselves to a 
 morning torture of cold water over their en 
 tire bodies because they think it their duty ; 
 
 255 
 
THE BEST BATH FOR MANKIND 
 
 and a pathetic fact it is. A few vigorous 
 persons react so readily and well that the 
 average of the experience to them is one 
 of pleasure ; but a vast army of weakly peo 
 ple who need more health and strength, and 
 who have no vigor to waste, expend half 
 their day s stock of energy in trying to get 
 up a reaction after the shivering experience 
 of the morning which they ought not to 
 have had and they succeed only poorly and 
 with purple lips and finger nails, with 
 twinges of neuralgia and with troubles of 
 digestion, all of which they try to combat 
 by thicker clothing and more room heat. 
 
 Hundreds of invalids are trying this sort 
 of experiment with themselves every day 
 of their lives, and with more struggle and 
 less success. This experience is specially 
 hard on the weakly tuberculous patients 
 who are so apt to have subnormal temper 
 atures in the morning. There is reason to 
 think the febrile patients have more fever in 
 the afternoon by reason of this morning 
 struggle. Yet some managers of sanatoria 
 for consumptives blindly advocate the daily 
 cold bath for every patient who can tolerate 
 and will take it. 
 
 This attitude is one of the most amazing 
 facts in human judgment. There is no 
 doubt that the shock of a cold thing momen 
 tarily applied to the surface of an easily re- 
 
 256 
 
THE BEST BATH FOR MANKIND 
 
 acting human body may affect the nervous 
 system in the direction of more vigor; that 
 is, as a stimulant, and so might do good. 
 But most of the invalids have very little re 
 acting power, and this rough experience 
 tends to lessen vitality, not to increase it. 
 Besides, it causes intropulsion of blood, 
 temporary congestion of internal organs, 
 and consequent disturbances of digestion. 
 To subject an invalid to a daily discomfort 
 that is not positively necessary is wicked; 
 it is doubly so if positive injury is done by 
 a useless pain-giving measure. 
 
 The daily full bath is not necessary for 
 the removal of dirt from the general surface 
 of the body. To say that the ordinary ac 
 cumulation of grime interferes with skin 
 physiology by closing the pores is nonsense ; 
 a little perspiration lifts the dirt from the 
 skin as inevitably as wood shavings float on 
 the surface of water. 
 
 Moreover, there are as fine specimens of 
 longevity, with a minimum of sickness, 
 among the habitually dirty people as among 
 the fastidiously clean. 
 
 Bathing of the whole body, and that often, 
 is commendable, as clean clothes are. They 
 all belong to the better civilization, and they 
 are nice. Bathing, too, may be a useful 
 stimulant to certain intimate processes of 
 the physiology of the body ; and it has some 
 
 257 
 
THE BEST BATH FOR MANKIND 
 
 effect of skin massage, which is good as far 
 as it goes; but for this last effect a rough 
 towel or a flesh brush does as well as the 
 bath. The activities of daily life of stirring 
 people give considerable skin manipulation, 
 so this manual grooming can hardly be de 
 manded for active folks, although it may 
 have a certain degree of usefulness. 
 
 Bathing should be made pleasant, not dis 
 agreeable. It ought not to be a torture but 
 a joy provided, always, that it can be 
 made a joy, and be as useful in all ways ; and 
 it can be. Bitter medicines and flagellations 
 are only justifiable by positive benefits for 
 most grievous ills. The daily bath need not 
 be painful in any of its steps. 
 
 The best bath for the average person, sick 
 or well, is a very hot one, taken on rising 
 in the morning, with a small quantity of 
 water, and taken quickly. Such an one is 
 a positive pleasure in every way ; it has no 
 drawbacks or dangers of any kind ; and it is 
 as useful as any bath can well be. The 
 water should be much warmer than the 
 normal heat of the body, and may range 
 from 105 to 110 F. The higher tempera 
 ture is preferable for a sponge bath, unless 
 the room heat is quite high. A dash of 
 water at 110 F. over the body causes in 
 stantly the condition called goose-flesh, 
 which is commonly supposed to be due to 
 
 258 
 
THE BEST BATH FOR MANKIND 
 
 cold upon the skin. It is the stimulation of 
 the skin suddenly that causes the phe 
 nomenon, whether it be produced by heat 
 or cold. 
 
 For a tub bath, which is the best, a bath 
 tub is not indispensable ; an ordinary large 
 wash-tub will do. It should have six to 
 twelve inches in depth of the hot water. 
 In this the bather sits and rapidly ablutes 
 himself, his whole body, with soap if agree 
 able and with any sort and degree of rub 
 bing that he likes, using hands, brush or 
 what not. It is better to sit and work than 
 to lie down in the bath. 
 
 Not over five minutes should be spent in 
 the tub ; three minutes more suffice to dry 
 the body; then dressing may be done at 
 once there is no need for towel rubbing 
 to bring on a reaction ; the reaction is there 
 already, with pink skin, lips and finger nails, 
 and with a pleasure that is complete because 
 unattended with the memory of punishment. 
 
 After such a bath one requires no rest or 
 other preparation for his breakfast or his 
 day s work ; he is ready for both, and goes 
 at them as a boy goes to his play. There 
 is no sensation of weakness or drowsiness 
 after such a bath, none of the letting-down 
 feeling that some people complain of after 
 a prolonged soaking at full length in a tub 
 of hot water. 
 
 259 
 
THE BEST BATH FOR MANKIND 
 
 There is no cold-catching or tendency to 
 it after the quick hot bath. In a knowledge 
 of some thousands of baths of this sort, by 
 people of all degrees of vigor and many 
 shades of various sicknesses, I have never 
 heard of cold-taking or any other injury 
 whatever from the bath. And unsought tes 
 timony to the value of this measure, in re 
 covery from neuralgias and so-called rheu 
 matism, from indigestion of various forms, 
 and in more vigor and pleasure in activity, 
 has come from too many of these people 
 often in melting gratitude at their discovery 
 to be accounted for by the complaisant 
 theory of coincidence. 
 
 There never was any reason in the preju 
 dice against the hot bath taken quickly. But 
 there is an explanation of it in the popular 
 tendency to remember and hand down from 
 generation to generation, without sense or 
 reason, all manner of notions and myths 
 about possible calamities to humankind 
 as though man could find happiness and 
 longevity if he could only have enough rules 
 against calamities. Thus, hot baths, night 
 air, fresh air in houses (especially in sleep 
 ing rooms), draughts of air, walking under 
 a ladder, seeing the new moon in a certain 
 way, observing deformed persons, having 
 the dreams of indigestion, and a hundred 
 other normal, harmless or insignificant 
 
 260 
 
THE BEST BATH FOR MANKIND 
 
 things have been branded as harbingers of 
 woe. And the brand has gone deep ; it per 
 sists with many people who would really 
 like to put away their foolishness. 
 
 It has been alleged against the hot bath 
 as here advocated that for the well it tends 
 to effeminacy and lowers the resisting 
 power of the body; that, to toughen one to 
 stand vicissitudes and avoid cold-catching, 
 nothing is so good as the cold bath, espe 
 cially about the throat and chest, with vig 
 orous rubbing. Many children of otherwise 
 kindly parents are daily tortured in this way 
 to "toughen them." Of course it toughens 
 them, but any other form of exercise would 
 do as well and hot water does it better 
 than cold. It does not prevent colds except 
 through increase of vigor. Colds do not 
 come by sensations of cold or by draughts 
 of air upon the skin, or by wet feet, but by 
 fatigue, lowered vitality, overstrain of the 
 nervous system, and especially by indiges 
 tion and other disorders of the stomach and 
 bowels. The best treatment of a cold is by 
 resting of the stomach and a free use of 
 saline laxatives, not with anodyne drugs of 
 the current fashion. 
 
 In northern climates people rarely have 
 colds during the winter weather, but rather 
 in the melting weather of spring. A fit of 
 migraine often is followed by a sneezing 
 
 261 
 
THE BEST BATH FOR MANKIND 
 
 cold, with irritation of the lower air pas 
 sages and coughs. This, too, is usually 
 helped more by alkaline saline laxatives 
 than by anodyne cough mixtures. 
 
 We are slow to adopt the correct theory 
 of the occurrence of the common cold 
 mainly because it is not the layman s theory, 
 for lay theories do sometimes persist amaz 
 ingly, even among doctors, who often 
 acquiesce in them without knowing it. 
 Benjamin Franklin, a layman himself, 
 taught the correct theory a century and a 
 half ago only it was not fashionable then 
 as it is not now. Many of his other wise 
 teachings are unfashionable. 
 
 The right way to avoid colds is to keep 
 the body well, and especially to attend to 
 the digestive organs ; and not to rail about 
 draughts, night air and hot baths, all of 
 which are good. 
 
 262 
 
The Draught Fetish 
 
The Draught Fetish* 
 
 Popular notions that are groundless are 
 always subjects of great interest. When 
 they are harmless, like numerous myths of 
 old, we can afford to be amused and enter 
 tained by them. But sometimes they are 
 harmful to those whom they possess, or 
 obsess, and to the world at large ; then they 
 rightly become matters of concern to the 
 economist and to all well-wishers of the 
 human race. 
 
 The popular notion about cold catching 
 and the danger from draughts and colds is 
 one of these harmful theories that amounts 
 almost to a delusion. There can be no doubt 
 that this fetish, for such it really is, leads 
 every year to the sickness and death of a 
 large number of people, and in a most un 
 necessary manner. Yet the idea is so firmly 
 fixed in the popular mind, and is held by so 
 large a majority of the common people that 
 it is regarded as axiomatic. To disturb the 
 
 *Reprinted from "The Journal of the Outdoor Life." No 
 vember, 1905. 
 
 265 
 
THE DRAUGHT FETISH 
 
 popular belief about it is always difficult. 
 Any suggestion or argument against it is 
 met at once with a storm of objections, if 
 not of ridicule. 
 
 Colds, according to an error of the pop 
 ular mind, are acquired chiefly through the 
 thing called a draught, which means a per 
 ceptible movement of air about the pa 
 tient s body, especially his head, when he 
 is indoors. The term is not applied to 
 the gentle breeze out of doors, although it is 
 the same kind of a thing. As a result of this 
 idea people are constantly disturbed, con 
 stantly fearful that they will sit in a draught 
 or stand in a draught, and if they feel a slight 
 movement of air they are mostly anxious to 
 stop it by closing windows and doors. You 
 may create surprise, even bordering on ter 
 ror, if you say that you enjoy draughts when 
 some good soul has rushed to close a win 
 dow to save your life asking if you are not 
 "afraid of that draught?" If you ask your 
 solicitous friend what harm there can be in 
 a draught, he will tell you that it will give 
 you a cold, and that then you may get con 
 sumption. If you remind him that he walks 
 and rides in a wind out of doors without any 
 such fear, he will tell you that a wind is not 
 a draught, and that a wind is not dangerous 
 like a draught. If you ask him what the 
 difference is, he is nonplussed, and you 
 
 266 
 
THE DRAUGHT FETISH 
 
 thereby discover that you have asked him 
 a new question, one that he never thought 
 of before, and his answer is likely to appear 
 to himself, on second thought, to be unten 
 able if not absurd. He can give you no ex 
 planation of the difference, for essentially 
 there is none. Yet if you should chance to 
 say that all people, well and sick, ought to be 
 constantly in a draught, never out of it, you 
 are likely to make some benighted people 
 think you are a slightly unbalanced doctri 
 naire, or that you really do not know what 
 you are talking about. 
 
 People doubtless do occasionally take a 
 sneezing that is harmless from sitting in 
 a draught, insufficiently clad. The remedy 
 is simply more clothing. But people do 
 not take their true colds from draught 
 or cold or even wet feet, but mostly from 
 fatigue, digestive derangements, overwork 
 and lack of sleep and rest. Colds less often 
 come on in the depth of winter than in the 
 warming weather of spring. As a result of 
 the popular notion, however, most people 
 when they have taken a cold immediately 
 knit their brows and begin to meditate on 
 what could have caused it. And as nearly 
 everybody is, for some length of time, some 
 moment each day, in a draught, it is easy for 
 any victim of a cold to refer his trouble to 
 some such experience, although the theory 
 
 267 
 
THE DRAUGHT FETISH 
 
 may be as groundless as one that should 
 ascribe the cold to the pointing of some 
 body s finger at him. 
 
 The truth is that the fear of a draught 
 compels numberless people to breathe bad 
 air constantly, which lowers their vitality, 
 makes it easy for micro-organisms to attack 
 them, and for them to get all sorts of dis 
 ease which constant fresh air might enable 
 them to escape. They are more susceptible 
 to cold catching than the people who either 
 ignore draughts altogether or clothe them 
 selves so that they can bear them. 
 
 There is only one way for us to know that 
 every inspiration brings us a body of fresh 
 air, namely, to have the air in front of our 
 faces constantly in motion; that constitutes 
 a draught, whether the motion be little or 
 much. The only way to live healthily is to 
 be sure that we do not breathe over again 
 the air we have already contaminated by 
 breathing, and the only way to accomplish 
 this is to be always in a draught. Not a 
 gale is needed, but a gentle draught. This, 
 then, is the gospel we should preach, and 
 we should preach it at all seasons and every 
 where. It will be met by ridicule, it has 
 often been ridiculed, but it is a truth of such 
 moment for the good of the people, and it 
 is so unimpeachable scientifically, that those 
 
 268 
 
THE DRAUGHT FETISH 
 
 who preach it can afford to smile at the rail 
 ings of the fetish followers who object to it. 
 The common cold is not followed by seri 
 ous disease, nor is it attended with fever. 
 True influenza or grip, on the other hand, 
 is usually a febrile disease and is occasion 
 ally followed by phthisis. A cold often fol 
 lows a fit of indigestion, a paroxysm of 
 migraine (sick headache), a day of overwork 
 or a night without sleep; it conies to those 
 who live out of doors perhaps one-fifth as 
 often as to the overhoused people. Soldiers 
 in camp, sleeping in tents or under trees or 
 wagons and wrapped in their blankets, very 
 rarely have colds. But when they go home 
 on furlough and sleep in close bedrooms 
 they show a marked susceptibility to these 
 troubles. 
 
 269 
 
Some Pasadena Architecture 
 
Some Pasadena Architecture* 
 
 A Criticism 
 
 Since the world began, the world of man 
 kind in many ways like ourselves, people 
 have followed some fashion. They have 
 trailed after the largest crowd, or, accord 
 ing to their standards, the most desirable 
 crowd ; and have tried to do things as these 
 crowds do them. The fashion makers are 
 really not wholly the makers of fashions. 
 They do mostly three definite things: they 
 study what the people will most readily ac 
 cept for the next fashion; they lean toward 
 a new fashion because they have tired of 
 the old; and they try to lead the people to 
 the new because it is profitable. 
 
 If we are committed to an uncomfortable 
 fashion, we hope to put it aside some time 
 in the future; to discard it on the moment 
 would be impossible. In our poverty of 
 
 *From "The Pasadena Star," March 12, 1910, under the 
 editorial management for one day of Rev. Malcolm James 
 McLeod. 
 
 273 
 
SOME PASADENA ARCHITECTURE 
 
 courage we hope for a change in the fashion 
 that will permit us to discard it. 
 
 When we look at the dwelling houses 
 built in Pasadena during the boom of 
 1886 and 7, it is difficult to believe that the 
 town was then inhabited by the same kind 
 of folks as live here now. Most of the 
 houses of that day are ornate with gewgaws 
 and jig-saw work, if indeed these are ornate. 
 Small wonder that when a man of later taste 
 buys one of these old houses he tears off as 
 many of the disfigurements as possible and 
 covers up as many of the rest as he can. 
 
 The dwelling houses of Pasadena today 
 are certainly more beautiful than those of 
 the early eighties. This is especially true of 
 many cottages and bungalows. The later 
 ones are quiet, dignified, restful in appear 
 ance, and possess in a much higher degree 
 the features that are likely to impress the 
 average thoughtful person as natural and 
 fit. Their colors are pleasing, and their 
 quiet dignity and lack of gaudiness must 
 appeal to the future ; and they are the admir 
 ation of the visiting world. 
 
 Some juxtapositions of colors, and certain 
 forms and shapes, are innately harmonious 
 and therefore essentially beautiful, although 
 the some-day fashion may deny it. Such 
 fashions as deny it are likely to be relatively 
 shortlived. We follow many awkward cus- 
 
 274 
 
SOME PASADENA ARCHITECTURE 
 
 toms for a time because they are the vogue, 
 but we soon lay them aside when they are 
 so inconvenient as to be somewhat vulgar 
 like cutting a watermelon or lettuce salad 
 with the edge of a table fork. 
 
 In one important particular many of the 
 later houses are distinctly inferior to some 
 of their much-ridiculed predecessors. Then 
 it was good form to project a peaked roof 
 into the air and decorate it with strips of 
 scalloped wood for architectural effect. Now 
 we make a quieter roof, but clap it down 
 within a few inches of the ceiling of the 
 sleeping rooms. This mode may comport 
 with taste, but from a humanitarian stand 
 point it is a crime. Try to sleep in an upper 
 room of one of these modern houses or in 
 one of these bungalows on a hot night, or 
 any cool night after a very hot day, and you 
 will discover where the crime is, and per 
 haps guess what punishment would fit it. 
 The roof gets hot during the day, the shal 
 low air space between it and the ceiling gets 
 hot, the ceiling is hot, and the people in bed 
 are hot, sweaty and worried. The high 
 attics of some of the discredited houses of 
 boom times make such hot ceilings impos 
 sible, and so in one feature at least they are 
 better, and show that our architecture has 
 retrograded. But many of the old houses 
 
 275 
 
SOME PASADENA ARCHITECTURE 
 
 have cramped little rooms in the roof, and 
 so are as bad as the flat topped bungalows. 
 
 Admit that we have very few hot days in 
 summer and fewer hot nights, yet there 
 are enough of them to make numerous 
 people sick who sleep in such bedrooms. 
 Some of them die from diseases contracted 
 in this manner. Many of them suffer woe, 
 sickness, doctor bills, and expensive trips 
 away from home to cool off ; and all because 
 of the squatty, low roofs of the houses they 
 sleep in. These tragedies are the more piti 
 able because they are wholly unnecessary. 
 
 Some painful fashions injure chiefly those 
 who adopt and follow them. These can 
 abandon the fashions and get rid of the dis 
 comforts if they will ; if they will not, they 
 perhaps deserve to suffer. Not so with the 
 fashions in houses. If the houses are un 
 comfortable and unhygienic, the evil is vis 
 ited upon successive generations of occu 
 pants, sometimes to their lasting injury as 
 well as to the hurt of the generations that 
 follow them. It takes money to change the 
 roof of a house, and a knowledge of the 
 cause of their sufferings that most of the 
 victims lack. The architects have the knowl 
 edge. They need only some courage and an 
 adequate conviction of sin. 
 
 In this region every roof over a sleeping 
 room should be high enough above it to give 
 
 276 
 
SOME PASADENA ARCHITECTURE 
 
 an abundant space into which the hot air 
 from the room can rush upon opening a 
 door. And the door should be provided, 
 and there should be openings to permit the 
 air to escape from the attic. The low attics 
 of today have commendable little ventilators, 
 but in quite nine houses in ten the vertical 
 attic space is not over one-quarter what it 
 ought to be for the few hot nights of any 
 summer. Then the houses should have win 
 dows, doors and transoms so arranged as 
 to make it possible to have thorough venti 
 lation and movement of air from whichever 
 direction there is a breeze. 
 
 Pasadena has hot spells in summer, like 
 Chicago and New York ; not more, probably 
 fewer. The heat is easier to bear than that 
 of the east, but that is no reason for making 
 ourselves as miserable as possible. The 
 house in Pasadena with a high attic and 
 windows and doors so arranged as to make 
 thorough ventilation easy is practically 
 never uncomfortable for sleeping in the hot 
 test nights of the year. The occupants of 
 such houses never need, on account of the 
 heat, to go away from home for comfort. 
 What is the sense of making a multitude of 
 people uncomfortable a half dozen or more 
 nights every summer for the paltry pleasure 
 in the looks of the roofs of their houses 
 and this not because they are innately more 
 
 277 
 
SOME PASADENA ARCHITECTURE 
 
 beautiful, but only fashionable in the year 
 they were built! 
 
 Notice how some citizen builds a house of 
 this modern sort. He takes the advice of 
 his architect who would have the structure 
 to be beautiful according to the modern 
 fashion in roofs. The neighbors compliment 
 him on his new house and he and his wife 
 think it very fine. But in two or three years 
 they offer it for sale they say they want 
 a smaller house, or maybe they will move 
 away; or some other reason, ingenuous or 
 disingenuous, is offered for selling the house. 
 The purchaser is told all about the various 
 virtues of the house ; it has a good founda 
 tion ; it is well made, is convenient, has good 
 closets and bathrooms, and is a thing of 
 beauty but not a word about the roof. The 
 house is sold. A year later these same peo 
 ple build another house with a high attic and 
 a door opening into it. They have learned 
 wisdom, but are embarrassed with their 
 temptation to tell of it, lest their real reason 
 for selling the first house will get to the ears 
 of the purchasers who may be their neigh 
 bors. 
 
 A large number of our citizens live and 
 die here without ever learning this lesson. 
 They always sleep under the low roofs, and 
 they will tell you, if they are frank and not 
 fearful of giving the town a bad name, that 
 
 278 
 
SOME PASADENA ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Pasadena has every summer some perhaps 
 many very hot nights, when it is difficult 
 to sleep in comfort. They never know any 
 better. The people who sleep under high 
 and well-ventilated attics will tell you just 
 as ingenuously and altogether truthfully, 
 that Pasadena never has a night too hot 
 for comfortable sleep that they themselves 
 always need a blanket over them some time 
 during the hottest of nights they may go 
 to sleep with only a sheet to cover them, or 
 perhaps not even that, but before morning 
 they find that they have, awake or asleep, 
 pulled up the blanket and covered their 
 bodies. 
 
 There was once a shield about which two 
 men are said to have quarreled, because they 
 were looking at it from opposite sides that 
 were different. 
 
 279 
 
The Yosemite Valley in Winter 
 
The Yosemite Valley in Winter* 
 
 If you would enjoy supremely a vacation, 
 if you are anxious to get away from an office 
 of dust, dirt and bad air, away from perplex 
 ing cares, and into the best possible condi 
 tions for recreation and recuperation, you 
 must visit the Yosemite valley in the win 
 ter. There is nothing like it especially if, 
 to reach the valley and return, you are 
 obliged to travel on horseback about one 
 hundred miles through snow, much of it 
 four feet deep, and break your own roads. 
 That is what we did, and a more bronzed 
 pair of Chicagoans than we are, now that 
 we have returned from the journey, you have 
 not seen.t When we proposed to our friends 
 in San Francisco that we might reach the 
 valley in February they asked us if we were 
 insane. To go to the Yosemite in the winter 
 was next to impossible ; the snow was thirty 
 feet deep ; we would freeze to death, most 
 
 *Reprint from the "Chicago Morning Record," March 12, 
 1882. 
 
 fThe other of the pair was the late Frank B. Tobey. 
 
 283 
 
THE YOSEMITE VALLEY 
 
 likely, if we attempted it ; if we reached the 
 valley we would be snowed in and could 
 not get out before April. Of twenty or more 
 sensible men of whom we inquired about the 
 matter, only one gave us the slightest en 
 couragement that we could reach the val 
 ley, and that one was Sam Miller, the agent 
 of the stage-line whose business it is to take 
 tourists to that spot. He said there was 
 not much snow on the Sierra Nevadas at 
 last accounts, and that, if we were not afraid 
 of a little snow, and could rough it if neces 
 sary, and if we did not encounter another 
 storm or two, we certainly could reach the 
 valley ; and the stage company would do its 
 best to take us through if we cared to try it. 
 As we bethought ourselves that we did not 
 visit the Pacific coast every year, we cared 
 to try it. The journey to Merced by rail 
 was easy enough ; and that by stage thence 
 to Mariposa, forty-five miles, was not hard 
 that of the next day to Cold Spring station 
 went off all right. There we encountered 
 snow too deep for a wheeled vehicle, and 
 there was no other vehicle to be had. We 
 found an old sled by the side of the road, 
 but it could not be used. We got saddles 
 and mounted the horses. It was ten miles 
 to Clark station.* 
 
 * Clark Station is now Wawona. 
 
 284 
 
IN WINTER 
 
 WADING AND WALLOWING IN SNOW 
 
 We waded, wallowed through the snow 
 that is, the horses did single file, and slow 
 ly. Clark s was reached in four hours and a 
 quarter, and we had traveled a little faster 
 than two miles an hour. We thought this a 
 very hard ride, and were much fatigued by 
 it. It was nothing compared with our task 
 of the next day, when we attempted to ride 
 to the big trees. Here we found the snow 
 deeper; it was, much of the way, four and 
 a half feet deep, and there was no track. 
 The horses took turns in breaking the way 
 for the party ; no one horse could have done 
 it alone ; every hundred feet we halted for 
 rest; several times my horse settled down 
 in the snow and rested on his belly, while I 
 stood upon the snow. Henry Berg would 
 never have taken that ride, nor have allowed 
 any one else if he could prevent it. I think 
 if I should discover you abusing a horse in 
 Chicago by such hardships as these horses 
 endured, you would be in danger of arrest. 
 We were six hours and a half in reaching 
 the big trees, just five miles, and it was nine 
 hours before we got back to the station. 
 What do I think of the big trees ? They are 
 large, but I could not think they were so 
 large as the undertaking we made to get to 
 them, or the idiocy of anybody who would 
 
 285 
 
THE YOSEMITE VALLEY 
 
 try to do such a feat under such difficulties. 
 There are so many colossal pines, and firs, 
 and cedars, and spruces in the magnificent 
 forest that covers the Sierra Nevadas that I 
 really think the sight of the big trees did 
 not pay for the effort, and the cruelty to 
 animals we were guilty of. 
 
 ADVENTURES IN THE WOODS 
 
 Next day we started over the mountains 
 again for the Yosemite. A sled had preceded 
 us, and there was something of a track. We 
 rode eleven miles to Eleven Mile station, 
 and there camped for the night in a rude 
 cabin with an old trapper and his compan 
 ion, who is an old seaman. We slept on 
 the floor with our overcoats on, and our feet 
 toward the fire. The coyotes and wolves 
 howled in the distance. In the early evening 
 we were entertained by a story, a yarn, by 
 the old sailor, of his adventures in the woods 
 near the Yosemite. He was lost, and slept 
 out in the cold all night, and had no food 
 for thirty-six hours ; it was winter, and he 
 had no clothes but overalls and a couple of 
 thick shirts. He built a fire with his last 
 match, and then could not keep warm ; he 
 rolled from side to side one side was warm 
 hot, the other was freezing. Finally he 
 fell asleep and was awakened by a smarting 
 sensation in his legs his overalls were on 
 
 286 
 
IN WINTER 
 
 fire. He put out the fire. He rolled over on 
 the floor to give us an illustration of the 
 performance. It was as good as a play. At 
 the end of the second day, after wandering 
 aimlessly about, he came upon a deserted 
 house not far from Glacier Point, which is a 
 part of the Yosemite region. The house was 
 used in summer for the entertainment of 
 tourists. He crawled in through the win 
 dow and found dried venison and tea and 
 old bread, and grease to fry the meat in, and 
 matches, but no whisky. His joy could be 
 expressed by one phrase only. He said : "I 
 says to meself, thank God for this, by God." 
 He fried his venison in his supposititious 
 grease, to find, when he sat down to the 
 meal, that he had used soft soap, and not 
 grease at all. "By Jove, I thought that grease 
 didn t sputter just right, any ow," said he. 
 When he got back to the valley and met the 
 friends who had been hunting for him, he 
 got beautifully boozy, all of which he illus 
 trated to us as well as he could sober, and 
 when going back in a wagon to Clark s, 
 where he had been employed, he wrapped 
 himself up in many blankets and pretended 
 to be very sick. It had the desired effect, 
 and he got some large draughts of good 
 whisky. In a little while the children at the 
 station, with whom this man was always a 
 favorite, were heard to say: "How quickly 
 
 287 
 
THE YOSEMITE VALLEY 
 
 Jim has got well; he was awful sick, and 
 now he is all right." Our guide said he had 
 heard Capt. Jim (Burgess) tell that yarn 
 more than a dozen times, and always word 
 for word as he told it to us. Not a particle 
 of the by-play is ever omitted. It was a 
 famous yarn. 
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TOO WEAK 
 
 Next day (February 21st) our horses car 
 ried us into Yosemite valley. It was fifteen 
 miles, and we reached it by 3 p.m. The snow 
 all the way was two to four feet deep, and 
 the same wallowing process, at a slow walk, 
 was the best we could do. We were over 
 come with fatigue, but more overcome by 
 the sight. Do not ask any one to describe 
 this spot the English is too weak. You 
 get a contempt for such words as sublime, 
 awful, grand, prodigious, magnificent; and, 
 when a man says charming, beautiful, won 
 derful, to you, he has insulted your under 
 standing. You must see the valley. It does 
 not lose anything of its value as a sight in 
 winter; it rather gains, for then you have 
 the ice-work in many forms about the falls, 
 and you hear the sound as of distant can 
 nonading, and most wonderful reverberation 
 and echo produced by the falling of great 
 masses of ice upon the rocks below. You 
 see what appears to be a snowball break 
 
 288 
 
IN WINTER 
 
 loose near the top of the falls ; you wait 
 twenty seconds or more by the watch, and 
 see it strike the rocks one-third of a mile 
 below, and break into fine fragments. In 
 a few seconds more the sound reaches you 
 from a mile or more across the valley. 
 At first it is a crashing sound, like an ex 
 plosion ; then down the valley you hear an 
 other sound like it in length of time, only 
 fainter; then a third in some other quarter, 
 and more faint all produced by the same 
 falling mass. 
 
 ADVANTAGES OF A WINTER VISIT 
 
 There are some real advantages in a visit 
 to the Yosemite valley in winter ; there can 
 be no doubt on this point. There is nothing 
 in the scenery that can be more imposing 
 in summer than winter, except this, that 
 there is more water flowing over the falls in 
 summer, and there are better mirror views 
 in the waters of the little Mirror Lake and 
 the river in the valley. There can be no 
 advantage in the summer verdure of this 
 region, either in the enjoyment of the val 
 ley or the journey through the Sierras to it, 
 for the trees are, nearly all of them, ever 
 green two kinds of pine, fir, cedar, several 
 varieties of live oak, and many shrubs and 
 bushes and a grand old forest of such mag 
 nificent trees as this is certainly a better 
 
 289 
 
THE YOSEMITE VALLEY 
 
 sight clothed in snow than under any other 
 possible circumstances. Then the ice phe 
 nomena of the falls, both its appearance and 
 the sounds, as of distant battles of artillery, 
 form a positive part of the enjoyment of a 
 winter visit, and, of course, cannot be en 
 joyed at other seasons. And the disad 
 vantages of snow in the valley are of no 
 consequence, unless the snow is very deep. 
 We ascended, without the slightest diffi 
 culty, the trail to the top of Columbia rock, 
 1,500 feet above the level of the valley, from 
 which point we got such a view of the can 
 yon as cannot be told for its very awful- 
 ness, and we might have visited others, and, 
 indeed, all the trails, had the snow not been 
 quite so deep. We would have made other 
 ascents had not our time in the valley been 
 limited. 
 
 The Yosemite Falls were small as to 
 amount of water, but very beautiful and 
 wonderful. The Bridal Veil Falls presented 
 a mass of colossal icicles, several hundred 
 feet in height and so deep from front to back 
 and of such purity as to give a deep bluish 
 green color, the true color of deep pure wa 
 ter. The mass did not look white like ordi 
 nary icicles and the greenish blue color 
 was phenomenally vivid. 
 
 We stopped at the Leidig Hotel. The 
 proprietor was so surprised and flattered by 
 
 290 
 
IN WINTER 
 
 such winter visitors that he treated us to a 
 dinner of turkey and champagne on Wash 
 ington s birthday. 
 
 NO DANGER FROM COLD 
 
 There is no danger, and need be no suf 
 fering from cold. The temperature on the 
 top of the Sierras at this point is never com 
 parable with that of Chicago in coldness. 
 This is February, we were over a week in 
 the mountains, much of the time 5,000 feet 
 or more above sea-level, and the tempera 
 ture was not lower than four degrees above 
 zero, the low point being a short time just 
 before daylight. The days have given us 
 a thermometer range of twenty to forty de 
 grees above zero, and we did not suffer a 
 particle from cold. Then the abuse of horse 
 flesh in plowing through the snow cannot 
 be so real as it seemed to us. Our horses 
 were with us and worked for us every day of 
 our trip ; they did not seem to be injured by 
 their trial ; every morning they would come 
 up fresh as larks, and when finally we got 
 out of the snow, and they were harnessed to 
 the stage, they dashed off like the blooded 
 stock of Kentucky. Nevertheless, the task 
 they performed would just about kill any 
 horse with which I am acquainted in Chi 
 cago. The owners of these animals repeat- 
 
 291 
 
THE YOSEMITE VALLEY 
 
 edly assured us that it would not hurt them, 
 and that they were used to such work. 
 
 I would not advise any one in the east to 
 go to California in winter for the purpose 
 of seeing the Yosemite at that time; per 
 haps ladies had better be advised not to go 
 to the valley at all in winter. But, if any 
 stout man finds himself on the Pacific coast 
 in winter, and would like to visit this region 
 as everyone must he need not be de 
 terred in the least by any snow of a less 
 depth than three feet. The trip will be a 
 good adventure for him, his appetite will 
 improve, and he will increase in vigor from 
 the hour he starts, and he will surely get 
 into the valley and out again, unless a snow 
 storm should come on. There is no danger 
 in this, and it need not worry anyone who is 
 not in haste to get home. He can get through 
 if he will take time. One who must posi 
 tively get back from the trip on a certain 
 day, that gives no surplusage for delays 
 and accidents, had better not attempt the 
 task in winter. 
 
 292 
 
A Program for America 
 
A Program for America* 
 
 The greatest stress should now and 
 permanently be placed on some program, if 
 there be such, that promises progressively 
 and permanently to make the world a better 
 place for mankind to live in. 
 
 There is such a program with such a 
 promise, and it comprises those forces that 
 may help toward the prolongation of human 
 life. The average length of life is the one 
 and only sure index of whether the world is 
 growing better; it is the unemotional but 
 inexorable measuring rod of real social prog 
 ress that can be told in figures. Other 
 standards of measurement there are, but 
 they are mostly vague, and founded largely 
 
 *The Editors of the American Journal of Sociology asked 
 for contributions from a large number of American citizens 
 "typical Americans" as they put it in answer to this question: 
 With a view to the interests not primarily of individuals or 
 of classes; considering not merely the next decade nor the 
 next generation nor the next century, but having in mind 
 our relationships both to one another and to our successors 
 for many centuries; upon what ideals, policies, programs, 
 or specinc purposes should Americans place most stress in 
 the immediate futuref 
 
 This article is the contribution of the present author. 
 
 295 
 
A PROGRAM FOR AMERICA 
 
 on faith and hope. Here is one that is based 
 on definite statistical facts. 
 
 It is axiomatic that if people are less often 
 hurried early out of the world, it must be 
 proof that the world is growing better to 
 live in. To live is the universal hope; 
 to escape death the universal wish. To 
 lengthen human life satisfies a world desire ; 
 all people seek long life, and comfort and se 
 curity as well as a sense of security. To 
 fight off death is instinctive from childhood 
 to age; to fight it off effectively is to have 
 less sickness, fewer accidents, less danger 
 of every sort ; orderly, perfect and continu 
 ing means of sustenance and comfort. 
 
 Since this is the spontaneous desire and 
 effort of the race, rather nugatory because 
 poorly directed and generally unorganized, 
 why not make it the definitive program of 
 social effort, and have it properly organized 
 and directed? 
 
 The world is better if it enables us to live 
 long, but length of days is not the only 
 pleasure in living on earth; there are many 
 beside, only all the other wholesome ones 
 result from and are connected with the very 
 influences that elongate the average span of 
 life. Those experiences of pleasure that 
 shorten life are an ultimate curse, and can 
 not form any part of a proper program of 
 society. 
 
 296 
 
A PROGRAM FOR AMERICA 
 
 The program here formulated is a large 
 one, and embraces many elements and 
 forces, but the ideal is extremely simple 
 prolong human life. The ideal is not fanci 
 ful but practical, and when carried out 
 means always an orderly state of society, 
 good government, and so protection for per 
 sons and property, as well as for personal 
 rights. A weak or unstable government 
 could not realize the ideal, for it could not 
 insure permanence of policy, which is vital 
 to its perfect realization. 
 
 It means conservation of personal interests 
 and weal; it means the compelling of per 
 sons to avoid excesses, recklessness and the 
 invasion of the rights of others it means 
 that, in certain things, men shall be com 
 pelled to be good and avoid being bad. 
 
 It means a thousand safeguards of per 
 sonal and public health, both affirmative and 
 prohibitive, such as: (1) safety devices and 
 education in and about them ; (2) whole 
 some hygienic conditions for all people; (3) 
 everlasting watchfulness and war on the 
 microbic causes of disease and death, war 
 against the carriers of disease germs as 
 rats, flies, mosquitos, fleas and many other 
 animate and inanimate things. It includes 
 (4) prevention by argument, suasion and the 
 force of law, from personal excesses, and 
 recklessness that can harm the individual or 
 297 
 
A PROGRAM FOR AMERICA 
 
 others, or can shorten any life. Of such 
 examples are the excessive use of alcohol, 
 and the use of other poisons of the brain, 
 like opium and its products, cocaine, chloral 
 and other narcotics. Among the harmful 
 defections are the sexual excesses that 
 spread disease, of which there at least two 
 that kill thousands of people and cripple 
 other millions, and that break up or imperil 
 the interests of family life, and blight the 
 lives of countless children. It means more, 
 and more general education, especially in all 
 things that help toward the longest life and 
 the largest life-totality of pleasure. 
 
 The influence of this ideal is toward more 
 amity among all people, more friendships, 
 truer altruism, higher spirituality, better and 
 fairer religions; for it is in line with that 
 foundation stone of the highest ethics and 
 so the basis of law namely, respect for the 
 rights and laudable desires of others. 
 
 This ideal tends against war. It stands 
 for the interests and safety of all the people 
 as a first consideration, and against the 
 whims or selfish interests of the one or the 
 few that happen to be in power, whether a 
 king or an oligarchy. It means democracy 
 of the best sort. 
 
 War might be necessary to safeguard such 
 a civilization, and peoples committed to such 
 high purposes would certainly be virile, and 
 
 298 
 
A PROGRAM FOR AMERICA 
 
 capable under all ordinary circumstances of 
 defending themselves, and compelling good 
 conduct in others. 
 
 War might for a time interfere with the 
 systematic efforts to prolong life, but a peo 
 ple once committed comprehensively to such 
 a policy could not give it up, unless abso 
 lutely destroyed or forced back into chaos. 
 Moreover, war might be necessary for the 
 better realization of the life program, for the 
 removal of obstacles or for the chastisement 
 of menacing peoples guilty of flagrant viola 
 tion of its principles. The program does 
 not imply disarmament and non-resistance, 
 but the contrary. 
 
 If the average life were prolonged and the 
 birth rate remained stationary, would not 
 the race become overcrowded? That is a 
 contingency that would take care of itself, 
 but the birthrate ought to be curtailed 
 wherever the coming of children would 
 shorten the lives of parents or offspring. 
 
 The concise ideal, the program to try sys 
 tematically to prolong life by every means 
 possible and the vital statistics of many 
 American cities today show fairly well what 
 measures do prolong life leads to all the 
 really good things in life, the wholesome, 
 sane and sensible things ; and to the avoid 
 ance of the bad things the excesses, the 
 
 299 
 
A PROGRAM FOR AMERICA 
 
 intemperance of many varieties, the reck 
 lessness and abandon, and careless or selfish 
 disregard of the rights of others. 
 
 The ramifications of the influence of this 
 program are as wide as the activities of the 
 human race. There is no other policy or 
 single aim, religious, economic, political, 
 ethical, educational or what not, that is so 
 comprehensive, so all-inclusive, or that can 
 appeal to so many of the American people 
 (whether they know it or not), and to all en 
 lightened people everywhere. 
 
 NOTE: The death rate indicates the longevity. In Norway 
 the average life rose in 10 years from 49.94 years to 52.17. 
 In Prussia the average rose in 30 years from 34.4 years to 
 48.2. The averages for women are 3% years greater than for 
 men. Recent records give Sweden 52.3, Norway 52.2, France 
 47.4, Belgium 47.1, England 45.9, U. S. 45.3, Italy 43, Ger 
 many 42.2. The death rate in this country averaged recently 
 16.5 per 1,000 annually; in Michigan it was 14, in New York 
 18; in London it was 15, and had fallen in two centuries from 
 45. The rate in Havana before the American occupation was 
 50, afterward it fell to about 20. 
 
 TWO centuries ago the average life was increasing about 4 
 years per century; sixty years ago it had risen to 9 years; 
 since then it has reached about 17. 
 
 In New York 30 years ago the expectancy for children un 
 der 5 was 41 years, in 1913, 52 years; for men of 25 to 30 
 years it was 32.06, in 1913, 34.03; for men of 40 to 45 years 
 it was 23.9, in 1913, 23.4; and for men of 85 it is 3^4 years 
 less than it was 30 years ago. 
 
 These last figures show that America is at least a better 
 place to be born and raised in than it was formerly. But they 
 show that the expectancy of life is decreasing rather than 
 increasing after the so-called middle period is reached. There 
 are two possible causes of this fact, one is the survival of many 
 children that formerly were lost, the other must be the de 
 generating effect of the luxury and indulgence of modern arti 
 ficial life. The lesson of the facts is unavoidable; live more 
 simple and hygienic lives. 
 
 300 
 
The Prevention of Railroad Acci 
 dents Due to the Personal 
 Equation 
 
The Prevention of Railroad Acci 
 dents Due to the Personal 
 Equation* 
 
 Can some railroad and other accidents 
 affecting human life, due to personal error 
 or miscalculation and heretofore mysterious, 
 be explained by the constitution of the hu 
 man mind? If they can be so explained, 
 they are to some extent preventable. 
 
 By other accidents than those of railroads 
 I mean such as occur in the work of drivers, 
 telegraphers, pilots, and surgeons. The 
 reasoning that applies to the one applies to 
 the other. 
 
 When we consider the nature of railroad 
 accidents we discover them to fall into a 
 natural classification : First are those due 
 to defective material, as broken wheels, rods, 
 bridges, viaducts, etc., bursting boilers, and 
 defective brakes. Next are those due to the 
 
 *Read at a convention of Railroad Surgeons at Chicago, 
 and printed in "Medicine," November, 1898. 
 
 303 
 
 
PREVENTION OF 
 
 elements and the earth, as from the sinking 
 of tracks, the washing away of bridges ; 
 from ice, snow, freshets, storms, wind, and 
 fire. Lastly, and most interesting of all, 
 and most deplorable, are those due to what 
 may be called the personal equation. These 
 fall into two or three sub-classes : First are 
 those due to failure of deliberate judgment, 
 as miscalculation of materials in bridges, 
 misjudgment of the force of motive power 
 and resisting power, and the like. Second 
 are those due to sudden loss of self-control 
 on the part of operatives, from fright, ex 
 citement, from panic and nervous stamped 
 ing; also from intense preoccupation, with 
 an accidental situation. The train breaks 
 down, and in the excitement both conductor 
 and brakeman forget about putting signals 
 on the track to the rear of the train, and so 
 a rear-end collision results. Third are those 
 accidents due to absent-mindedness the 
 lack of mental attention to the thing in hand 
 when the thing is important. A man leaves 
 a switch turned wrong from this cause, for 
 gets to put out the proper signal, and trains 
 collide. An engineer runs past a signal to 
 stop, and a collision occurs like that in Kan 
 sas recently. A man has in mind for an 
 hour and pays strict attention to the thought 
 that he must flag an approaching train, and 
 then forgets to do it. There is no impeach- 
 304 
 
RAILROAD ACCIDENTS 
 
 ing of the intentions and honor of the opera 
 tives in these cases. The engineer who 
 missed the signal was killed, and life was as 
 precious to him as to other men. 
 
 It is this last variety of accidents and the 
 mental state leading to them that will be 
 mainly considered here. All other classes of 
 calamities are measurably manageable, or 
 rather they can be calculated at least they 
 can be understood ; even those due to sud 
 den stampeding are not difficult of explana 
 tion, and something can be done and much 
 has been done to prevent them. 
 
 The cases due to absent-mindedness are 
 most perplexing; they constitute a class lit 
 tle understood, always uncertain, never to 
 be predicted or calculated upon in the slight 
 est degree. The basis of the likelihood of 
 their happening has seemed to be an un 
 known quantity, and we are left to deplore a 
 helplessness to correct them. 
 
 Whenever such a calamity occurs we are 
 aghast with amazement and wonder, and 
 resolve that everybody must thereafter be 
 very careful to the end that such accidents 
 shall not recur. To those who stand aghast, 
 the accident does not occur again, at least 
 while their amazement lasts ; but the rest of 
 the world is quite uninfluenced by the 
 calamity. 
 
 The greatest care on the part of railroad 
 305 
 
PREVENTION OF 
 
 managers seems to have failed to eliminate 
 this mental element from railroad opera 
 tions. Numerous checks of great value 
 have been instituted whereby two or three 
 persons must take part in certain acts and 
 transactions, to prevent a possible accident, 
 as in the nature of the sending, receiving 
 and execution of telegraphic orders for the 
 movement of trains. But the flagman stands 
 alone nobody keeps watch to check him if 
 he forgets, nor very much the engineer 
 while actually running his train, nor the 
 brakeman putting out his signal, nor the 
 switchman, nor, always, the train dispatcher. 
 These men, to a degree, work alone, and any 
 time a moment of forgetfulness, confusion 
 or absent-mindedness may lead to a calam 
 ity. How to eliminate this danger is the 
 problem a problem doubtless incapable of 
 complete solution ever. 
 
 If there were some way of knowing who 
 is more and who less likely to be seized 
 with such a wave of mental abstraction, it 
 would be something; or if we knew under 
 exactly what circumstances such lapses are 
 likely to occur to any man, that would help 
 greatly. The startling thing is that such 
 lapses often come to the oldest, most sedate 
 and correct, and most tried and trusted em 
 ployes, and at times when there is not the 
 slightest reason to doubt their usual effi- 
 
 306 
 
RAILROAD ACCIDENTS 
 
 ciency ; when they are neither sick nor tired 
 nor overworked, nor disturbed by any dis 
 tracting influence which their fellows know 
 about. 
 
 Some things bearing on this subject we 
 do know : for example, distracting the at 
 tention of the engineer or motorman is liable 
 to lead him into trouble, and so passengers 
 are forbidden to ride with the one or talk 
 with the other. The common danger ot 
 being confused by too many distracting 
 duties or influences is well enough under 
 stood and is guarded against as far as pos 
 sible by protection from interruption, short 
 hours, and opportunity for rest. Constant 
 mental attention with absolute singleness 
 of purpose to the thing in hand is evidently 
 the supreme desideratum. But frequently 
 influences creep in that cannot be barred out 
 by any rules, that the individual himself per 
 haps could not prevent, as for example, per 
 sonal worries, physical discomforts, and 
 emotional disturbances of various kinds. One 
 waft through the mind of jealousy or envy, 
 one personal pique to worry about, may 
 break fatally into any systematic mental 
 action and completely derail the attention. 
 One fit of indigestion, especially if it causes 
 despondency of mind, will kill all reliable 
 mental attention. A man so afflicted will 
 read a page of a book and ten minutes later 
 
 307 
 
PREVENTION OF 
 
 be unable to tell a thing it contained; he 
 would in that mood be an unsafe engineer. 
 Every physician sees repeated cases of peo 
 ple with this sort of mental abstraction so 
 serious that they seek advice for it. They 
 think they are losing their minds and all 
 that ; they notice that they forget and worry 
 and are easily upset and nonplussed. They 
 may have indisposition or other bodily dis 
 order that produces the worry in part; but 
 worry may aggravate the bodily disorder, 
 and so each phase of the trouble accentuates 
 the other. Many of these patients know 
 they are unfit for business, and abstention 
 from business is often prescribed for them. 
 But from this extreme degree of trouble to 
 the normal type of men there are all grada 
 tions of disorder, and many of the milder 
 cases are going on with their work, whatever 
 it is, and nobody supposes them to be ab 
 normal. They are making all sorts and 
 shades of mistakes, with every variety of 
 consequences. 
 
 There is another cause of such lapses of 
 attention as lead to accidents, which is sub 
 stantially never thought of, and it occurs to 
 men who are in perfect physical health and 
 have no unavoidable worries. It is the very 
 expertness, and the perfection of mastery a 
 man has in the expert thing or the responsi 
 ble duty he has to do. Great familiarity 
 
 308 
 
RAILROAD ACCIDENTS 
 
 with such a duty, expertness and deftness in 
 its performance, become dangerous to that 
 mental attention to the thing in hand that 
 is so necessary. So, quickness and ease of 
 learning become a danger rather than a 
 benefit. A telegraph operator who learned 
 the business very easily was a phenomenal 
 worker, could, so to speak, do his work 
 without thinking, and for years had never 
 made an error. One day, as a train dis 
 patcher, he confused the names of stations 
 and caused a collision. 
 
 A careful consideration of this subject 
 must show the indispensable importance of 
 mental attention to any expert work or re 
 sponsibility. Failure of attention to the 
 details leads to the accident or loss. The 
 attention must be constant. In various in 
 dustries of life this is important, and most 
 where one acts for others and especially for 
 many; where, in case of failure, the injury 
 would be widespread. These are what may 
 be not unfitly called hazard- or danger- 
 duties. How to secure constant attention to 
 these is the supreme question. What makes 
 the attention to the important thing in hand 
 always alert? What leads it to flag? The 
 subject on which we wish to fix and keep 
 the attention is only one of many impres 
 sions coming into the mind and already in 
 it. How may all other thoughts be thrown 
 309 
 
PREVENTION OF 
 
 to the background and kept there till the 
 task is over? 
 
 The subject is a large one. When the act 
 is a novel one and has to be learned, is 
 being learned, and there is pride and interest 
 in acquiring it, attention may be constant 
 for a long time ; but finally the interest often 
 flags and falls from fatigue. A sense of re 
 sponsibility helps to keep it up, but as the 
 maneuver becomes familiar less attention is 
 required to do it, and so less is given, and 
 there is a chance for the attention to be 
 fixed on other things, and so in grave mat 
 ters there is danger. As long as the awful- 
 ness of the duty the omission of which may 
 kill is kept fresh in the mind there is no 
 omission ; the duty is done to the letter. But 
 the average man cannot perpetually keep 
 his mind keyed up to this pitch during his 
 hours on duty. The awful duty will grow 
 less awful by repetition. We can walk and 
 think ; we could not always do this, but 
 every successive step had to be thought of 
 and directed. Not having to think of the 
 steps of our walking, we may think of all 
 sorts of subjects and walk as well. 
 
 If one can walk and think independently, 
 then an expert can run a locomotive and 
 much of the time not all the time think 
 intently of other things men sometimes do 
 this and miss signals and forget orders, and 
 
 310 
 
RAILROAD ACCIDENTS 
 
 so a crash comes. The Kansas case of re 
 cent date was evidently one of this sort. 
 
 The more automatic, that is, the more per 
 fect, the man becomes in his special task, the 
 more likely is he therein and thereby to 
 have mental abstractions and so forget and 
 blunder. If this task were one that could be 
 trusted solely to his automatism, like a com 
 plicated piece of music that one becomes 
 artistically mechanical in executing and that 
 should be done every time in exactly the 
 same way, the automatism might be trusted, 
 but unfortunately the railroad operative has 
 always to use some judgment and sense and 
 watchfulness with his automatism, for the 
 situations daily vary a little, if only a little, 
 and here is where he sometimes fails. And, 
 other things being equal, the more perfect 
 his automatism and the more oft repetition 
 has taught him that the act is a matter of 
 course the more familiar he is with it the 
 more likely he is to be the victim of abstrac 
 tions and .absent-mindedness. If he has 
 other things on his mind or is given to day 
 dreaming, he is always in danger of forget 
 ting. 
 
 So, awful a thing as it seems to say, the 
 oldest, most trusted and by the records the 
 most reliable employe, may be, and often is, 
 more likely to bring on a frightful accident 
 
 311 
 
PREVENTION OF 
 
 than the youngest one who has attained the 
 same service and rank. 
 
 The capacity to learn rapidly, to be deft 
 easily, is a dangerous gift ; for it reduces the 
 need of attention to the task, and increases 
 the facility with which two combinations of 
 thought can be carried on in the mind at the 
 same time. The most treacherous exercise 
 of all is to think of two things at once when 
 the one is vital ; the only safe course is to 
 think constantly of the one vital thing. 
 There are more fortunate gifts than mental 
 quickness and precocity, and one of them 
 sometimes is mental slowness. That man, 
 chagrined at his dulness, who learns slowly 
 to be an expert is lucky, for then he ac 
 quires the habit of close mental attention 
 to the thing in hand and the thing that he 
 is charged with. To him the habit is more 
 likely to stay after the act has become auto 
 matic, and so he may be spared a calamity 
 from absent-mindedness. 
 
 Probably no class in the community is 
 more obnoxious to this misfortune than 
 doctors. Efforts to carry on at the same 
 time two lines of thought have led them to 
 errors in prescription writing and to blun 
 ders in surgery that would be more amus 
 ing if they were less calamitous. But the 
 surgeon whose blunders are likely to be 
 most fatal is often saved by the fact that 
 312 
 
RAILROAD ACCIDENTS 
 
 hardly two of his operations are exactly 
 alike he is most apt to slip in those manip 
 ulations that are most similar, when his 
 hands may act without his constant and 
 reasoned thought. 
 
 What remedy can be offered for the diffi 
 culties here outlined? For some of the dan 
 gers to railroad employes, which have been 
 referred to, there is evidently one course 
 that will eliminate to a considerable degree 
 the peril from too much familiarity with 
 the occupation or too much expertness. 
 That is, occasionally and systematically to 
 lay off old and quick employes or give them 
 other kinds of work for stated periods, so 
 that they may come back to their danger- 
 duties a trifle strange to them and therefore 
 obliged to exercise more constant and steady 
 attention. The novelty and strangeness will, 
 as long as they last, tend to keep other 
 thoughts than the vital ones in abeyance, 
 and so safety will be enhanced. 
 
 It is matter for regret that statistics have 
 not been gathered to show whether men 
 coming back to their work from absences of 
 variable periods are more or less liable to 
 blunder than similar operatives who have 
 been continuously at their work. I have no 
 doubt that such statistics would show that 
 the vacations are protective. 
 
 I am aware that such a proposition as is 
 313 
 
RAILROAD ACCIDENTS 
 
 here made will strike the average railroad 
 manager as absurd, and the faithful opera 
 tives might easily consider it an affront to 
 their efficiency and good intentions. But 
 managers have not succeeded in curtailing 
 much the class of accidents under discus 
 sion, nor are they likely to succeed by meth 
 ods heretofore in use ; for the constitution of 
 the human mind will not change, nor can 
 we hope that its limitations will vary much 
 with any amount of effort. And to say that 
 a man s capacity for mental attention should 
 be rested at intervals, if it has been over 
 worked, is no more an insult to him than to 
 say he should rest his body by repose and 
 his whole brain by sleep. Our difficulty 
 over the question is due to the novelty of it. 
 The daily need of sleep is an axiom every 
 human being has proven experimentally. 
 Many have proven that short hours and oc 
 casional vacations renew and increase one s 
 capacity for mental labor of the highest 
 sort ; and two-thirds of the gain is always in 
 the resting of the faculty if it may be 
 called a faculty of mental attention. Why, 
 then, should it seem strange that benefit 
 would come from resting this faculty, over 
 worked and fatigued in occupations of less 
 purely intellectual kinds? 
 
 314 
 
The Mastodon 
 
The Mastodon* 
 
 It is a good thing to have good manners, 
 and good manners dictate that in describing 
 the members of a family we speak of the 
 most elderly first; this shows a proper re 
 gard for age. Accordingly we begin the 
 history of our "happy family"t by paying 
 our respects to the mastodon, for I believe 
 he has existed much longer than any other 
 member. Some men say his age is thirty 
 thousand years ; others put it at four or five 
 thousand. We will take a middle place and 
 guess he may have seen six thousand years. 
 
 Think of it! A hundred years is a long 
 lifetime ; what of a thousand ; what of six 
 thousand ! How short-lived and little we 
 are! 
 
 I told you the animals in our collection 
 were stuffed and that you could see only 
 their skins. This is true of a large part of 
 them, but not of the mastodon ; him you see 
 
 *From "The Bright Side, a Paper for all Children," Feb 
 ruary, 1870. 
 
 fAt the Museum of the Chicago Academy of Sciences. 
 
 317 
 
THE MASTODON 
 
 only in his bones. His skeleton, strongly 
 bound together and supported by irons, 
 stands erect to show us something of the 
 monsters of times gone by ; but his skin and 
 the flesh of his body have gone to their 
 native dust ages and ages ago. So long 
 have his bones been bereft of .their natural 
 covering that they are stained brown by the 
 iron they have absorbed from the earth in 
 which they were entombed ; for it is only a 
 few years since they were found and 
 brought to the light; all the time before, 
 they have been safely stowed away under 
 the ground. 
 
 When alive, this animal probably looked 
 very much like the elephant. I say probably, 
 for no man on earth today ever saw a living 
 mastodon ; he belongs to what are called 
 extinct animals that is, animals which for 
 merly lived but which have all passed away, 
 centuries ago. Yes, from his skeleton, he 
 must have resembled very much the ele 
 phants you see in the menagerie, only he 
 was a great deal larger and more massive. 
 His bones are almost twice as heavy as 
 those of the elephant. 
 
 Tom Thumb is a man; he looks like a 
 man and acts like a man, but in height he is 
 not much of a man after all. The elephant 
 is like the mastodon, but in size is like a 
 baby compared with it. 
 
 318 
 
THE MASTODON 
 
 This great beast had a trunk, long tusks 
 and a very heavy and sluggish body indeed ; 
 he must have been very homely, very awk 
 ward and uncouth, but God had a purpose 
 in his creation as truly as He had for the 
 most beautiful of His creatures. I believe 
 this purpose was accomplished. 
 
 How large is the mastodon, do you ask? 
 
 Let one tall man stand on another tall 
 man s head ; let both stand on tiptoes and 
 let the upper one stretch out his neck as 
 much as he can, and he could not quite look 
 over the back of the largest mastodon. He 
 has a skull as large as a small cook-stove, 
 and in shape not very unlike it, and his leg 
 bones, in some parts, are as big as large 
 stove-pipes. Some of his teeth are so long 
 that they would just reach across the three 
 printed columns of "The Bright Side." 
 
 Could this pile of ancient bones speak to 
 us, what wonders would it not tell ! Their 
 history how remarkable ! 
 
 Look back to the time before man was 
 created. This animal, so large to us, walks 
 the earth ; the land is different from what 
 we see around us ; it is covered with strange 
 trees and plants, and inhabited by strange 
 and long since extinct animals. There are 
 coniferous trees those like the hemlock and 
 pine and many others of large size, and 
 these the mastodon eats, these are his food. 
 
 319 
 
THE MASTODON 
 
 The trees grow rapidly and large, and he 
 browses among the tender limbs ; he crushes 
 the wood with his huge teeth, and sucks the 
 sap as easily as we devour an apple. He 
 treads the earth lordly and proud, it is true, 
 but he has company of other gigantic beasts. 
 The mammoth, the megatherium, and cas- 
 toroides are his companions ; they move and 
 sport, masters of the field and kings of the 
 forest, for no man has yet lived. The garden 
 of Eden is unoccupied and Adam and Eve 
 have not yet eaten that fatal fruit which 
 is to cause so much trouble. 
 
 Through the ages, God has been prepar 
 ing the earth for the reception of man, whom 
 He is about to create. But these monster 
 animals are too large for man to cope with, 
 many of the plants are too large and coarse 
 for man to eat and use; the mastodon has 
 lived, lived long and done his work. What 
 then? 
 
 A great commotion in the watery ele 
 ments; they overspread the ground where 
 you and I live ; immense seas there are, and 
 they come rushing down from the north and 
 bring with them icebergs, with great stones 
 called boulders, imbedded in their frozen 
 bodies. They roll and tumble against each 
 other and grind to powder massive rocks 
 that fall in among them ; they make deep 
 scratches in the rocks which they pass over 
 320 
 
THE MASTODON 
 
 and happen to strike against scratches 
 which future centuries shall find on rocks 
 lying upon the surface of the soil. What 
 started on the journey away north as rocks 
 has been crushed to common dirt, so great 
 has been the grinding. Everything, it 
 seems, is going to be destroyed. Masses 
 of earth and sand and gravel fill the rush 
 ing torrent ; these sink and are piled high in 
 some places, so that little hillocks are left 
 dotted over the bottom of the sea: between 
 these there are in places depressions like 
 the beds of ponds, while the dirt makes the 
 soil for the time to come. All this in geol 
 ogy is called the drift period, and this earth 
 that has been washed down from the north 
 is called the drift deposit. 
 
 The water subsides; the land is much 
 higher than before, and so changed, so dif 
 ferent! The mastodons have died and their 
 bones have been buried here and there over 
 the country. New plants spring up like 
 those of the future; new animals come into 
 being, but smaller and tamer than those 
 that lived before these are fit to be the 
 servants of man. 
 
 And now man is created. 
 
 Some thousands of years pass away and 
 
 the human family grows and multiplies. 
 
 Europe is inhabited. The people learn to 
 
 make and sail ships; one man, with a few 
 
 321 
 
THE MASTODON 
 
 followers, sails across an ocean and discov 
 ers a new continent. A century or two 
 pass and the continent begins to be set 
 tled. Two centuries more and it is covered 
 with people those that came first have 
 been in their graves a hundred years and 
 more, but the land is filled with folks. 
 
 The people find one of the great depres 
 sions in the drift deposit filled with water; 
 it is a lake ; they found a city by its side and 
 call it Chicago. The country around is set 
 tled by husbandmen who till the soil and 
 beautify the land. Not far from this city 
 there is a great marsh, which has long been 
 filled with stagnant water, and workmen 
 begin to dig a ditch to drain it. They throw 
 up the soft clay with their spades : they talk 
 to each other of what a garden they will 
 make of the marsh by and by, what rich fruit 
 and golden grain will grow there, when 
 hark! a spade strikes something solid! A 
 stone dig away. No, it is not a stone ; what 
 is it? They uncover it. It is the bones of 
 the mastodon. They are carefully lifted to 
 the surface; they are washed and brought 
 to the city by the lake, and finally have a 
 place in our "happy family." 
 
 The world, so old ; your lives and mine so 
 short! We are a spot less than that, a 
 speck in the ocean of things, and we mark 
 but a second in the great eternity. 
 322 
 
THE MASTODON 
 
 Let the history of the elder brother of 
 this "family" cure us of arrogance and pride, 
 and teach us humility. 
 
 The mastodon had his mission in the 
 world antf performed it. May future genera 
 tions say as much of the brotherhood of the 
 human family that lives today. Of this you 
 and I are a part. 
 
 323 
 
An Elderly Woman 
 
An Elderlv Woman* 
 
 You were told that in our "happy family" 
 there was a woman ; that she was very old, 
 having existed several hundred years. Good 
 manners, again, compel us to write her his 
 tory next, as she is next younger than the 
 mastodon. 
 
 We may possibly get her to tell her own 
 story; the mastodon could not do this, for 
 only his bones are left us, and then, you 
 know that mastodons cannot talk ; it is only 
 men and women that talk ; I mean children, 
 too, of course, for they are the men and 
 women of the future. 
 
 Listen to the tale of her life. 
 
 She was born about 300 years ago in Peru, 
 South America. She belonged to the com 
 mon people and her parents lived in a hum 
 ble way in a very plain, simple home. She 
 was not born rich, but ever made by her 
 presence a wealth in the household of her 
 father and mother. She was loved and ca- 
 
 ^ *From "The Bright Side, a Paper for all Children," Chi 
 cago, March, 1870. 
 
 327 
 
AN ELDERLY WOMAN 
 
 ressed and cared for as tenderly as are the 
 little folks who live now. I presume her 
 mother thought she was one of the finest 
 babies in the world. 
 
 She grew rapidly, and as she grew her 
 whole object seemed to be to eat and play; 
 she was full of fun and frolic; she had not 
 the slightest idea of where she would be in 
 300 years. She lived in that portion of time 
 called now; she thought only of present 
 pleasure. 
 
 How much like the children of today! 
 Would that the men and women lived as 
 truly in the great now, as the boys and 
 girls do. 
 
 Nobody is so kind-hearted to children and 
 so solicitous for their good, as God and their 
 mothers. This girl s mother was as kind 
 and good as most mothers; she disliked to 
 hurt her child, but pain must be once in a 
 while inflicted. 
 
 Some who read this article may be aware 
 that sometimes teeth have to be pulled, and 
 that it is not so pleasant as eating gum- 
 drops or lozenges, which, by the way, don t 
 destroy the teeth. 
 
 Well, this child had to have her teeth 
 pulled as children do nowadays; more than 
 this, she had to have her head squeezed. 
 All the children had to endure this, for the 
 people in that age and clime got the notion 
 328 
 
AN ELDERLY WOMAN 
 
 into their minds that the outsides of their 
 heads were badly shapen. 
 
 They must have thought God did not 
 know how the human head ought to grow, 
 for they all undertook to improve on the 
 form He gave them ; they nearly all dis 
 torted their skulls. 
 
 What a blasphemous race ! To be dissat 
 isfied \vith the form of head that the Creator 
 had said was "very good" ! To try and twist 
 and flatten the well-moulded crania they 
 were born with ! 
 
 "But stop," something says to me ; "do 
 you mean what you say? You insult the 
 good people of our day ; for do not the chil 
 dren big children of our generation pinch 
 and deform their bodies to change their 
 form? Do they not lace their waists and 
 squeeze their feet, all to make them look un 
 like what God made?" 
 
 Well, it may be I did wrong in writing it, 
 but it shall not be rubbed out. 
 
 Yes, the Peruvians compressed their 
 heads. The process was begun when they 
 were infants or small children, for it can be 
 done only when the skull is delicate and 
 easily moulded. It would be hard to twist 
 the head after adult life had been reached 
 that is, the outside of the head ; many of 
 us get the inside terribly twisted after we 
 are full grown. 
 
 329 
 
AN ELDERLY WOMAN 
 
 The more aristocratic people of that far- 
 off old country made the pressure on the 
 sides of the head, so that it became very 
 long and very narrow. Probably they had a 
 desire to be "long headed" ; and so they 
 were, but not wholly in the sense of being 
 wise. 
 
 The peasants flattened their children s 
 heads by placing a board on the forehead 
 and one on the back, carrying bandages 
 around the whole so tightly that the head 
 was squeezed; the boards were so narrow 
 that the bandages pressed somewhat on 
 the sides of the head, so that it could not 
 grow long or wide, but could only grow 
 upward. Such was the torturing ordeal 
 through which this little girl had to go. 
 
 But she was told that it was to make her 
 head beautiful, and as soon as she could 
 comprehend this she was glad the pain had 
 been inflicted, and was ready to undergo far 
 more for the same object. 
 
 The cramping process is finally finished, 
 her head is flattened from before backwards, 
 and she is prepared to be a young lady. 
 
 Time flies on and she becomes a woman, 
 and children are growing up around her. 
 She attends to her household and keeps it 
 seemly and in order, as good wives and 
 mothers do now. In her humble home her 
 toilet is not omitted she is neat and tidy. 
 330 
 
AN ELDERLY WOMAN 
 
 Whether she painted her cheeks I do not 
 know, but certain it is she braided her hair 
 and in the most funny manner, too. She 
 had long hair, and combed it down smoothly 
 on either side, parting it in the middle ; then 
 she began in the center and braided it down 
 by the side of the face, taking in with every 
 crossing of a strand some more hair, so that 
 when done she had one long braid in front 
 which was attached to the hair the whole of 
 the way. I am particular to describe this, 
 for just as her tender fingers arranged it 
 hundreds of years ago, has it remained ever 
 since ; it has not been taken down. 
 
 Some of the people called her beautiful ; 
 we w r ould not call her so in this day, for her 
 face is broad and flat, she has high cheek 
 bones, a flat nose and a very sharply pointed 
 chin. Such was beauty then, not now. 
 
 But in the prime of life she was cut down ; 
 she died as other folks die; she was buried, 
 though not in shroud or coffin ; but with 
 only some wrapping cloth she was taken to 
 the burial ground by the seaside. 
 
 On the coast of Peru hardly a drop of rain 
 falls during the whole year, and all the 
 ground is parched continuously; everything 
 is dry. The people had their cemetery on a 
 sand hill; here they buried their dead in a 
 sitting posture. In a square grave they were 
 made to sit upright with the feet folded up 
 331 
 
AN ELDERLY WOMAN 
 
 under the body, and with the hands crossed 
 on the breast or raised by the sides of the 
 head. Over them they threw a sheet or 
 blanket, and then covered the whole with 
 sand. This is so dry and hot that it pre 
 serves the bodies and they do not decay; 
 they dry up and do not crumble to mould. 
 
 Such was the experience of this woman. 
 She died and was buried; her family and 
 friends mourned her loss ; bitter tears were 
 shed, and tender, sympathetic hearts sank 
 and said they could never be happy again 
 now this dear one had gone. 
 
 Time flies on ; the tears are dried ; amid 
 the cares of life the mourning weeds are 
 finally put aside; her family grow old and 
 die ; soon all that ever knew or heard of her 
 are in their graves. 
 
 America has been discovered by Colum 
 bus. Europeans come and conquer Peru; 
 they come and settle North America. Many 
 generations pass away. A noble man, whose 
 name is Smithson, founds an institution for 
 the diffusion of knowledge the Smithson 
 ian Institution. This sends a man to Peru 
 who finds in the sand this woman. She is, at 
 last, sent to Chicago, and in our happy 
 family, behold her, a repulsive object, a 
 dried body, a mummy. 
 
 332 
 
To an Old Broom 
 
To an Old Broom 
 
 By a Bachelor 
 
 Broom, thou long and well hast served, 
 From duty thou hast never swerved, 
 
 But now we two must part ; 
 And while I say my last good-bye, 
 A friendly tear invades my eye, 
 
 And sadness fills my heart. 
 
 But thou art growing old, and years 
 
 Have bowed thy form, though yet appears 
 
 No gray thy locks among; 
 They re thin and short, and thou must own 
 Thy strength and beauty all have flown 
 
 Thou art no longer young. 
 
 1 never yet have heard thee scold, 
 But ever modest, never bold 
 
 Or rash! Ne er raised above 
 My head, in omen strange and dire, 
 By woman s hand, to quell my ire 
 
 Or charm me into love. 
 
 335 
 
TO AN OLD BROOM 
 
 Although thy toil has been in dust, 
 Without complaint, and free from rust 
 
 Hast thou been found, and clean; 
 And in thy habits staid hast taught 
 Me much that s good, so not for naught 
 
 Has all thy life-work been. 
 
 I say adieu with tender grace, 
 And call another to thy place, 
 With comelier form and brighter face, 
 
 To sweep and keep my room; 
 To be my helper at my side 
 Assisting o er life s dreary tide 
 To be my solace and my pride, 
 
 I take another broom. 
 
 336 
 
BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR : 
 
 The Penalties of Taste 
 
 and Other Essays pp. 164 
 
 The Rewards of Taste 
 
 and Other Essays pp. 270 
 
 House Health 
 
 and Other Papers pp. 204 
 
 DUFFIELD & COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 
 
 Tuberculosis 
 
 Lectures at Rush Medical College 
 
 of the University of Chicago pp. 302 
 
 W. B. SAUNDERS & COMPANY 
 
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